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1
.
 A.

MANUAL
OF

PHARMACODYNAMICS .

BY

RICHARD HUGHES ,
L.R.O.P.

THIRD EDITION , MAINLY RE -WRITTEN .

CU

BUS
SIMILI
LIA

RA
NT
SIMI

ALO
E

KONOTO
100 %
HENRY TURNER AND CO.,
OY LONDON ,
77
77, FLEET STREET, E.C.
NEW YORK : BOERICKE & TAFEL, 145, GRAND STREET.
1876.

3 93
 PREFACE .

This work originally appeared in 1867, as the first part of

a " Manual of Homeopathic Practice for students and begin
ners. ” It was couched in the form of letters to an enquiring
friend . A second edition was published in 1870. The addi.
tions rendered necessary by the progress of knowledge were,
for the convenience of those who possessed the volume in
its original form , placed between brackets or affixed as notes.
When , in 1874, I was called upon to prepare a third
edition, it seemed desirable that the work should assume a
homogeneous and as it were primary character ; and that the
matter of the first two editions, together with such additions
as I might have to make, should be welded together in one
consecutive whole. But I found, on consideration, that more
than this would be necessary . I had by this time become
painfully conscious of the limited range of the information
with which I had previously worked, especially as regards
original provings and French and German literature. The
endeavours I now made to extend my knowledge showed me
that the work must be, to a great extent, not only re- cast but
re -written, if it was to satisfy my present sense of what was
required of it.
While I was planning and initiating the undertaking, the
circumstances arose which led to my being requested by the
British Homeopathic Society to deliver a course of lectures
in London on Materia Medica and Therapeutics. The form
of my work was thus determined for me ; and an additional
motive supplied for making its substance as full and accurate
as possible. The lectures were delivered between February
iv PREFACE ,

and June, 1875, and again from October to January, 1875-6.

The present volume contains them . I have added the minor
medicines omitted in my course, and some re-arrangement
has been necessitated hereby. With this exception, the lectures
stand here substantially as they were given .
In my introductory discourse I have stated fully the scope
and method of my procedure ; and need not dwell upon them
in this preface. On one feature of the work only I would
make a remark . While I had hitherto been content to say
the proving of such and such a drug is in the Materia Medica
Pura , or Chronic Diseases, or elsewhere, I have now thought
it advisable to give a brief analytic account of each patho
genesis, stating the sources from which it is derived, and the
proportion in which they have contributed to it ; and also ,
where possible, the manner in which the symptoms were
obtained . I have reason to think that a very vague con
ception exists in most minds (I know it once did in my own )
as to the nature of the pathogenetic materials of Homeo
pathy. This imperfect knowledge is apt to lead, on the one
side to superstitious veneration, on the other to sceptical
neglect — both being, I conceive, unwarranted towards the
Materia Medica as a whole, and either being generally mis
placed in its own reference. I have accordingly done my best
(though I have yet more to do in the same field ) to ascertain
and exhibit the general character of such pathogenetic col
lections as we possess, so that aa reference to them may carry
its own meaning with it. And I have also examined each
constituent member of these, and each separate contribution
of the kind, on its own merits, and stated the results ; so
that the student may know in each case the nature of the
material with which he is working, and esteem and use it
accordingly.
The kind appreciation with which this Manual has hitherto
been received, both in its own language and in a French and
German dress, leads me to hope that it will not be found less
but more useful in its present elaborated form .
 CONTENTS.

LECTURE PAGK

1.- Introductory 1
II. - The Acids 21
III. — The Acids ( continued ) 35
IV . - Aconite, Actæa 52
V. — Æsculus, Æthusa, Agaricus, Agnus castus, Ailanthus,
Allium cepa and sativum, Aloes 71
VI. - Alumen , Alumina, Ambra, Ammonicum carbonicum and
muriaticum, Amyl nitrite, Anacardium , Antimo
nium crudum and tartaricum 86

VII.- Apis, Argentum metallicum and nitricum , Arnica 109

VIII. - Arsenic . 128
IX . - Arum , Asafætida, Asarum , Asclepias, Asterias, Aurum ,
Baptisia, Baryta . 147
X.- Belladonna 161
XI. - Berberis, Bismuth, Borax, Bovista , Bromine and the
bromides 189

XII . — Bryonia, Cactus 206

XIII. — Calcarea, Camphor, Cannabis sativa and Indica . 221

经
XIV . – Cantharis, Capsicum, Carbon sulphidum, Carbo animalis
and vegetabilis, Caulophyllum , Causticum 242
XV . - Cedron , Chamomilla, Chelidonium , Chimaphila, Cicuta ,
Cina and Santonine . . 259
XVL -- Cinchona and Quinine . 274
XVII. - Cistus, Clematis, Coca, Cocculus, Coccus cacti, Coffea,
Colchicum, Collinsonia . 295
XVIII. — Colocynth , Conium , Copaiba, Corallium , Crocus, Croton . 314
XIX . - Cuprum , Curare, Cyclamen, Digitalis 330
XX . — Dioscorea, Drosera, Dulcamara, Elaterium , Eupatorium
perfoliatum and purpureum, Euphorbium, Euph.
rasia, Ferrum 351
XX1. - Gamboge, Gelseminum , Glonoin, Graphites, Gratiola,
Guaiacum 371
vi CONTENTS .

LECTURE PAGE

XXII.—Hamamelis, Helleborus, Helonias, Hepar sulphuris . 389

XXIII. - Hydrastis, Hydrocotyle, Hyoscyamus, Hypericum ,
Iguatia, Indigo 406
XXIV.- Iodine and the iodides 424
XXV . - Ipecacuanha, Iris, Kali bichromicum . 448
XXVI. — Kali carbonicum , chloricum, nitricum, and permangani.
cum, Kalmia, Kreasote, Lactuca 466
XXVII. - Lachesis and the serpent poisons 483
XXVIII.—Ledum, Leptandra, Lilium, Lithium, Lobelia, Lycopo
dium , Lycopus, Magnesia carbonica and muriatica,
Manganum , Menyanthes . 498
XXIX . - Mercury . 518
XXX. - Mercury ( continued) . 532
XXXI .—Mezereum, Millefolium , Moschus, Murex , Natrum car
bonicum, muriaticum , and sulphuricum, Nuphar,
Nux moschata 553
XXXII.-Nux Vomica, Oleander 567
XXXIII. — Opium , Origanum , Osmium, Pæonia, Paris, Petroleum,
Petroselinum , Phellandrium . 583
XXXIV.- Phosphorus . 603
XXXV . - Physostigma, Phytolacca, Platina, Plumbum .
627
XXXVI. — Podophyllum , Pulsatilla 647
XXXVII. - Ranunculus, Ratanhia, Rheum, Rhododendron , Rhus,
Rumex, Ruta . 661
XXXVIII. — Sabadilla, Sabina, Sambucus, Sarguinaria, Sarracenia,
Sarsaparilla , Scilla , Secale, Selenium , Senecio,
Senega, Sepia . 678
XXXIX . — Silica , Spigelia, Spongia , Stannum , Staphisagria 700
XL . - Stramonium , Sulphur . 719
XLI. — Tabacum , Taraxacum , Tellurium , Terebinthina, Teu.
crium, Thuja, Uranium 735
XLII.-Urtica, Uva ursi, Valerian, Veratrum album and viride,
Verbascum , Viola odorata and tricolor, Xan.
thoxylum , Zincum 756
XLIII. - Supplementary 775
 LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTORY .

GENTLEMEN,
We are met to -day to inaugurate a course of instruc
tion upon Materia Medica, i.e. upon the materials used in
the practice of medicine. It will be well, at the outset, to
indicate and define our field of study .
1. There are agents employed and measures prescribed in
the treatment of disease which are roughly classed under the
term hygienic. These include the diet and regimen of the
patient, the choice of his climate, the regulation of his habits.
Again, there are ways in which the various forces and elements
of nature can be pressed into therapeutic service, as the use of
water in its various forms, the bringing to bear of heat and
cold in due proportions, and the application of electricity. In
systematic treatises on Materia Medica many of these agents
are discussed, and they cannot be denied a title to the name.
If I exclude them from our consideration here, it is not from
their being undervalued . It is simply because I have nothing
to say about them which is not better said elsewhere ; and
because I wish to devote our entire attention to the action of
drugs.
2. Drugs — that is, substances which have the power of
affecting the animal body in health and disease -- are the
Materia Medica of which I propose to speak. And of these,
again, solely as they affect the body. Taken from the animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, they have characters and
relations which belong to the sciences dealing with those
1
2 INTRODUCTORY .

departments of nature. In the treatises of which I have

spoken, such features of drugs often occupy a large space ;
and to them I must refer you for all information of the kind .
I shall use it only so far as may be necessary to identify the
drug before us ; which done, it will be discussed as a drug and
nothing else.
3. Such discussion, as I have said, will embrace the action
of each substance upon the organism in health and disease, -
its action physiological ( or pathogenetic), and its action thera
péutical. Of the former little needs now to be said. There
is no question but that our knowledge on this head should be as
full and accurate as possible. The only limitation is on the
side of Toxicology. Our subject is pharmacodynamics ; but
it is the duvàuers of páppara as medicines, not as poisons. We
require to know their poisonous action for the purpose of
using them as curative agents : in as far as it comes within
the range of Forensic Medicine - in all that relates to dia
gnosis, tests, antidotes, and such like — it is beyond the range
of our present inquiry.
4. A far more important qualification of our task arises
from the therapeutic side of the action of drugs. These
lectures are delivered in the board - room of the London
Homoeopathic Hospital : they are instituted by the British
Homoeopathic Society as a step towards founding in this city
a School of Homeopathy. How far do the principles indicated
by this name modify the teaching of Materia Medica ?
The two lectures which have recently been given in this
place by my friend Dr. Dudgeon render it needless for me to
speak here of the nature of homeopathy. The only assump
tion regarding it needful for my present purpose is that it is
a therapeutic method, and a legitimate one. It is neverthe-.
less entirely ignored in the common text-books on Materia
Medica ; the few known applications of medicines which come
within its range finding place there as empirical uses only.
It accordingly becomes the duty of a teacher in a School of
Homeopathy to give, in the therapeutic part of his task, the
 INTRODUCTORY . 3

foremost rank to such uses of his medicines as result from the

rule similia similibus. He will not neglect to glance at and
estimate other modes of employing them , but he will give his
main strength to these : these he will do, and not leave the
others undone.
5. But the avowed recognition of homeopathy in this place
will have further effects,
First, it will influence the range of the Materia Medica we
shall have to consider. Homeopathy presses into its service
a far greater number of natural products than traditional
medicine employs. It has revived many valuable agents
from the unmerited oblivion into which they had fallen , and
is continually adding new remedies to its stock by means of
the organon it possesses in the law of similars : for it has but
to ascertain the pathogenetic action of any substance, and its
medicinal use is indicated forthwith . The Materia Medica
we shall study will be that of Homeopathy, which embraces
all the ordinary medicines, and adds many another thereto .
Secondly, our homeopathic standpoint will greatly enrich
the materials on which we can draw for the knowledge of the
pathogenetic action of drugs. The practical carrying out of
the rule , “ let likes be treated by likes," has necessitated
extensive and minute " proving " upon the healthy body.
The record of such experimentation constitutes the distinctive
Materia Medica Homeopathica. Passed by in the ordinary
lectures and treatises, this record will take special prominence
here. We may use as freely as others can the observations
of poisoning and over-dosing, and the experiments on animals,
which constitute the bulk of the pathogenetic material gene
rally available. But we shall add to these, and rank above
them in importance, the pure proving on the healthy which,
though not unknown previously, is confessed to have been in
an especial manner the meritorious endeavour of the disciples
of Hahnemann .
The sum of what has now been said is this . It will be
my duty to discourse from this place on the Homeopathic
4 INTRODUCTORY .

Materia Medica ,-- that is,"mentioning all the substances which

homeopathy uses as medicines ; setting forth , in addition to
other information, the peculiar knowledge which homeopathy
possesses of their pathogenetic action ; and,while not ignoring
different uses, describing especially the applications which
homæopathy makes of them in the treatment of disease .
These lectures will not attempt to supersede, but only to
supplement, the instruction on the subject elsewhere obtain
able : they belong not to a School of Medicine in general, but
to a School of Homeopathy.
I must assume that my hearers - over and above any who
may be present from interest in the subject or for kindly
support of the lecturer - are adherents of homeopathy, but
as yet students and beginners in its practice. Your recog
nition of it is due to hereditary prepossession, or to personal
conviction resulting from the study of its apologetic writings
and the occasional observation of its working. These have
satisfied you of the reasonableness of its doctrines and the
positive efficacy of its remedies. You are assured that in this
law of similars a new vein has been struck , pregnant with
remedial wealth ; and you desire to furnish yourselves so sa
to work the vein to its utmost. To do this from the point of
view of disease will be the province of the lectures on Clinical
Medicine which it is hoped will soon be delivered in this
place : it will be mine to do it from that of drugs. Address
ing students, accordingly, these lectures must needs be
didactic in tone and exhaustive — as far as may be- in matter .
Any who may honour me with their presence from motives of
another kind will not be offended that so it is : they will
kindly consider themselves listeners rather than direct audi
tors.
I have first to introduce you to what we call, loosely, the
“ Materia Medica ” of Homeopathy ; which is (as I have
said) the record of the pathogenetic effects of the substances
so named. It has for its first and chief constituent the two
works of Hahnemann entitled Materia Medica Pura and
 INTRODUCTORY. 5

Chronic Diseases, published in their latest form ) between

the years 1822—39. They have been rendered into English
from the German original by Dr. Hempel of America, and, in
one or other language, should be in every one's hand . They
contain pathogeneses (as we call them ) of upwards of sixty
medicines, comprising most of those whose frequent use enti
tles them to the name of “ polychrests.” The two collections,
however, are of very unequal value. The symptoms con
tained in the six volumes of the Materia Medica Pura were ,
for the most part, observed upon persons in health, who were
taking for experimental purposes substantial quantities of the
drugs. But those additional pathogeneses, or parts of patho
geneses, which Hahnemann furnishes as materials for the
treatment of chronic diseases were obtained in a different way.
More than half of the symptoms are those of patients, being
any and every change in their sensations while taking the
medicines ; and all are effects - real or supposed - of infini
tesimal doses, i.e. from the millionth to the decillionth of a
grain. The evidence for these facts I have adduced in a
paper which you will find in the thirty -second volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy ; and in the succeeding
number I have followed it up with an inquiry into the value
of symptoms so obtained . I must leave you to draw your
own conclusions from what I have there advanced . Mine
however, are that it is impossible to use such pathogeneses as
materials for the study of the physiological effects of drugs,
.and that in these lectures I must simply name and pass them
by. We next have records of provings made independently o
Hahnemann, or not published by him, but belonging to his
epoch and having his sanction . These are mainly contained
in the Arzneimittellehre of Drs. Hartlaub and Trinks, and
the Additions to the Materia Medica of Dr. Stapf, the
latter of which we also have in English, from Dr. Hempel's
pen . Last, there are the provings of the post -Hahnemannic
era , mainly to be found in our periodical literature, but occa
sionally appearing in separate .volumes - as those of Drs .
6 INTRODUCTORY .

Esrey, Mure, and Houat, and the New Remedies of Dr. E. M.

Hale .
Attempts have been made from time to time to collect
these scattered materials into a single series. Of these the
most considerable are the Symptomen -Codex of Dr. Jahr
(1843 ), and the Handbuch of Drs . Noack and Trinks (1843-7 ).
Of the former we have more than one translation . But
both are out of date, and at the best abridgments. Of
greater promise than either is the Encyclopædia of Materia
Medica now set on foot by Dr. Allen of New York . It bids.
fair, if completed, to be the most exhaustive collection of
pathogenesy in existence .
Another form in which some constituents of the Materia
Medica exist for us is that of monographs on individual drugs,
aiming at exhaustive presentation of all that is known re
garding them. Besides separate essays, II may specify here
the pathogeneses of Dr. Hering of Philadelphia in his
Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen and his Materia Medica ;
and the treatises of the Hahnemann Materia Medica in this
country.
It will be my duty to refer you, for each medicine, to the
record of its original proving, and to any special work in the
way of study or arrangement which has been done upon it .
The means of making such references for yourselves are , in
most instances, provided by the Library of the British
Homeopathic Society, from which books can be obtained
through its members by any who attend these lectures. But
I must now tell you what, in the Materia Medica itself, you
must expect to find.
Let us take as an example the section on Arnica in the first
volume of the Materia Medica Pura. After a short preface,
speaking of some of its therapeutic uses, we have a list of
symptoms, 638 in number, purporting to be observed patho.
genetic effects of the drug. Of these 280 have no name
attached, and are to be understood as contributed by
1
Hahnemann himself. Of the remainder, 311 are marked 1
 INTRODUCTORY . 7

with the abbreviated names of the fellow -observers acknow

ledged by him in his preface, seven in all ; and 47 are credited
to certain authors, reference being given to the place where
the observation may be found. The symptoms are arranged
in an order mainly anatomical, proceeding from those of the
head to those of the extremities, and ending with generalities
and psychical phenomena. No information is given as to the
subjects on whom they were observed , the doses by which
they were produced, or the connection and sequence in which
they occurred .
This description, with slight variations, will hold good for
all Hahnemann's medicines, and for a great many of those
furnished by his followers. The first impression made upon
the mind by the symptom -lists it characterises is one of utter
confusion and discouragement. As has been said in allusion
to the order of the schema) —the reader begins with vertigo,
and ends with rage. But let us inquire why Hahnemann
originated, and others imitated , such a mode of presenting
the pathogenetic effects of drugs ; and what use was intended
to be made of the symptoms furnished . Then, perhaps, we
shall understand the rationale of the form adopted .
Now it is obvious to any one who considers the subject, that
there are two conceivable modes of working the homeopathic
method of following the rule, " let likes be treated by likes .”
The one may be called the à priori mode, the other the à
posteriori.. The former infers from the pathogenetic action of
any substance what will be the morbid conditions in which it
should prove curative. The latter begins with disease
instead of drugs ; it is the course we adopt when, having
examined a case, we turn to our pathogenetic records to see
what medicine has caused similar symptoms in the healthy.
That the latter was Hahnemann's ideal plan seems to me
incontestably proved by his Organon. There is no trace
there of wish on his part that the homeopathic practitioner
should make any study of medicines in themselves prior to
their application to practice. Their pathogenetic effects
 INTRODU
OC
8

.
having been ascertained and recorded, we have but to refer to
such record, after we have examined our patient, to discover
the simillimum to his case . Hence the arrangement of the
pathogeneses in the form of a schema of disconnected
symptoms. If every case is to be treated by writing down its
phenomena in anatomical order, and finding what medicine
has produced all, or the greatest number, or the most charac
teristic of them , then the form adopted answers every
purpose. That it is impossible to form any à priori notion of
the medicine, or to see in its effects any true pictures of
disease, is, upon this system, of no consequence .
That this is the explanation of the form of the Homeo
pathic Materia Medica is, I think, unquestionable. Nor is it
doubtful but that provision must be made for this mode of
homeopathising. So many morbid states are known to us
only as an assemblage of phenomena, that there is no other
way of treating them than by comparing them at the time
with our pathogenetic records, and fitting drug symptoms to
those of disease . Hence the pathogenesis of every medicine
must be arranged in schema form for our purposes, and the
only change to be desiderated is the improvement of the
arrangement. But were this the whole of homeopathy, the
function of a lecturer on Materia Medica would have no
existence. The only knowledge required would be the where
abouts of the pathogeneses ; the only faculty to be exercised
upon them would be that of memory , and even this would be
>

superseded by the employment of the indices we call reper

tories.
The fact of my delivering, at the request of the British
Homeopathic Society, this course of lectures shows that in
its judgment previous knowledge of medicines is necessary
and desirable. Even to use the Materia Medica aright
upon the à posteriori plan, it is very helpful to know the sig.
nificance of the several symptoms as fully as may be, and to
be acquainted with the general sphere and character of the
medicine. Mere mechanical symptom -covering is as likely to
 INTRODUCTORY . 9

miss as to hit the mark. Still more important is it that you

should be furnished for what I have described as the à priori
method of homeopathising, that as far as possible you should
go forth ready equipped for your work without cumbersome
apparatus of books of reference . So to inform , and so to
furnish you, is the task I have undertaken . Let me say a
few words upon the toū otw which a lecturer has for this
purpose.
First, in nearly all the new provings which have appeared
since the death of Hahnemann , it has been recognised as
essential that the daily records of the experiments should be
furnished , and not merely a schema of the results. These
are invaluable, both for illuminating the individual sym
ptoms, and for revealing the morbid states to which the drug
effects are similar. For the provings of Hahnemann and his
immediate followers we have no such aids, so far as their own
symptoms are concerned . But those cited from authors,
which in some pathogeneses constitute an important element,
can in most cases be examined in their originals, and thus
their meaning and value be ascertained . This work has been
done for some of the medicines by Drs. Roth , Langheinz, and
others; and I am myself at the present time engaged in con
pleting it for the whole Hahnemannic series. Dr. Allen's
Encyclopædia will embody my results.
Secondly, we have the facts brought forward in the ordi
nary treatises on Toxicology and Materia Medica. They want
the fulness and minuteness required for the application of
the law of similars ; yet in their measure they are extremely
helpful. To know that a poison is narcotic, narcotico -irri
tant, or irritant only is knowledge sufficiently vague ; but it
is a clue. It indicates the relative importance of various
symptoms, and the class of diseases to which the drug corre
sponds. The revelations of morbid anatomy carry us a step
onward yet. They show the organs and tissues upon which
the poison exerts its influence, and in a broad way the cha-.
racter of that influence. The classifications of manuals of
10 INTRODUCTORY .

therapeutics — which study drugs as cathartics, diuretics, ex

pectorants, and so forth - help us still farther to localise the
sphere of the influence of each ; and of late the physiological
side of the action of medicines has received much greater
attention in these works, to our corresponding profit.
It is perhaps supererogatory to point out the best books
of this kind . Christison and the first edition of Taylor
On Poisons, with Orfila's Toxicologie, have made any later
works on the subject needless at present. Of the older
treatises on Materia Medica, the English Pereira, the French
Trousseau and Pidoux, and the American Wood may be named
as excellent in their way . The modern books of Phillips, *
Ringer,t and the younger Wood † are of a different stamp .
The first is little more than the record of what the writer
learned during the twenty years in which he avowedly prac
tised homeopathy ; it is of interest to us mainly as showing
how much he can retain and put forward under another name.
Dr. Ringer's book , when it first appeared , was an incorpora
tion with the traditional uses of medicines of such knowledge
as he could obtain of their employment in the school of
Hahnemann . The facts of this latter class it contained ,
stated always without reference to their source, made it like
a stream of fresh air to practitioners of the old system ; and
it rapidly attained great popularity. In subsequent editions,
the author has spoken more frankly as to the authorities for
his novel statements ; and has himself enlarged the thera
peutic sphere of several medicines by using them according
to the law of similars in the large field of practice at his
command . His fourth edition — which I shall cite here - is
thus a work of much value. The Treatise on Therapeutics
of Dr. Horatio Wood has a usefulness of another kind .
* Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Vegetable Kingdom.' By Charles
D. F. Phillips, M.D., F.R.C.S.E. 1874.
+ ' A Handbook of Therapeutics.' By Sydney Ringer, M.D. 4th edition,
1874.
I ' A Treatise on Therapeutics.' By H. C. Wood, jun., M.D. 1874 .
 INTRODUCTORY . ll

Himself a diligent worker in the physiological laboratory, he

has made it his business to keep au courant with all that is
done of this sort elsewhere. He can thus present to us a
summary of all experimentation that has been carried on
with any drug down to the date of his publication, and has
done so with very satisfying fulness. His book is as
necessary for our knowledge of the pathogenetics of the
old school, as they now are, as Dr. Ringer's for its thera
peutics, and throws many a side -light on our own Materia
Medica .

Thirdly, we are materially aided in our studies of phar

macology by clinical experience, by what we are accustomed
to call the usus in morbis. As soon as this has become
sufficiently extensive, it avails to stamp the character of the
various medicines, and to show in what part and in what
kinds of derangement they have real energy. Light is thus
thrown back on the pathogeneses, and their characteristic
features and fundamental phenomena become manifest. In
these, each medicine seemsto affect more or less every organ
or function of the body ; but from the usus in morbis we learn
which are the primary seats of its influence, and which the
merely subordinate and sympathetic.
A great mass of clinical experience with medicines used
after the homeopathic method has now accumulated in our
periodical literature. Collections of it have been made from
time to time, as those of Rückert in German and Beauvais ( a
pseudonym for Roth ) in French . But for your introduction
to the subject, and for our present purpose, I can commend to
you no more excellent books than those of two honoured
members of this Society - the Applied Homeopathy of Dr.
Bayes, and the Hints for the Practical Study of the Homoeo
pathic Method of Dr. Chepmell. The former by stating
his own experience with our leading remedies, the latter
by a series of typical clinical records with observations,
stamps indelibly on the mind of the student the leading
features of the drugs he specifies. But it is not from avowed
12 INTRODUCTORY .

homeopathic experience only that we can draw for this

object. All treatment by single medicines used for their
direct effects upon the disease is truly of this kind, though it
knows or acknowledges it not. Hence such collections as
those of Frank's Magazine * are of great value to us. This
exists only in German ; but in M. Teste's Systématisation
pratique de la matière médicale homeopathique (1853) , which
we have also in English, copious use is made of the expe
rience of the older medical writers as illuminative of the
special properties of our remedies.
Taking his stand upon the ground thus described, the
lecturer on Materia Medica will survey for his hearers the
field of pathogenetic phenomena he has to characterise. My
main object will be to set forth the sphere of action of each
drug. Every medicine, even though it be one of those great
polychrests which seem to embrace nearly the whole or
ganism within the circle of their influence, has one or more
centres of action . What these centres are we learn, some
times from the pathogenetic, sometimes from the clinical side.
When we have learnt them , they become all-important stand
points for the understanding and the remembrance of the
medicine. These centres I shall endeavour, wherever prac
ticable, to reach, and around them to group the several
actions and uses of the drugs. There will always be resi
duary phenomena in such a process ; but these I shall not fail
to note when their importance demands it.
Our method will be as follows :-After defining what it is
that we are administering under the common names of the
drugs - Aconite, Arsenic, and so forth - I shall refer you to
the authorities for our knowledge of each . Under this head
will be mentioned the original provings, and any special
sources of information which may exist. Then I shall proceed
to describe the pathogenetic influence, and to indicate the

* Magazin für physiol. und klinisch. Arzneim . und Toxikol. ' 4 vols.
Leipzig, 1845–54.
 INTRODUCTORY . 13

therapeutic uses of the drug. A list of allied medicines will

next be given, with which the drug under study may be
profitably compared. Lastly, I shall touch upon the question
of dose, but only so far as to state whether the lower or higher
dilutions seem to have been most efficacious in the treatment
of disease . The question of the relative superiority of these
is a moot one among us, and I have no pretensions, nor is this
the occasion, to pronounce upon it. But it is a matter of
fact that certain remedies belong almost exclusively to the
partisans of infinitesimals, while others are in chief favour
among those who prefer appreciable fractions of the drug.
Such facts I shall state for what they are worth. They,
together with the individual items of experience on record ,
are the data from which all future generalisations must
be drawn ; and in the meantime they are hints for practical
use .
Here, as elsewhere, you will desire to know whether
homeopathic literature possesses any books which you may
profitably study in connection with the present course of
instruction . There are two well known among us, the
Traité méthodique et pratique de matière médicale et de théra
peutique of M. Espanet of Paris (1861) , and the New and
Comprehensive System of Materia Medica and Therapeutics of
our indefatigable American colleague, Dr. Hempel (2nd ed.,
1865 ). The former is brilliant, but its pathogenetic statements
have rather too much assumption about them. The latter con
tains much information ; and, with pruning of many redundan
cies, and supplying of more deficiencies, * would be a valuable
treatise. A smaller and humbler work, yet one in which
I cannot but feel an interest, since it is my own, is the
Manual of Pharmacodynamics. It was first published in
1867 ; and a second edition appeared in 1870, incorporating
the additional matter of the interval. These lectures are
based upon the materials I had collected for the third. At

See review in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii.

14 INTRODUCTORY .

the same time, they will be no mere augmented repetition

of what is already before the world. I had previously planned
a complete re-writing of the book, based upon the much wider
range of study, especially of the original sources, to which I
have been recently led, and including a re- consideration of my
former authorities. Of course, if any special point has been
satisfactorily treated in the previous editions, it would be
mere waste of energy not to reproduce it here. But, with
these exceptions, the matter I shall have to bring before you
will be substantially new .
And here, as there, I must state that what I shall say
in no way professes to be a substitute for the Materia Medica
itself. It is rather an introduction at first, and then a guide
and companion to it. The pathogeneses of the medicines,
given in detail therein , I shall present in the way of descrip
tive outline, of analysis, or ( wherever possible) of physiological
expression. But the Materia Medica itself is the mine where
the treasure, however rough its form, really lies. To indicate
the vein where each mineral may be worked, to estimate the
value of its yield, to exhibit such of its products as have been
obtained and smelted , and especially such as have been
applied to use — this will be my task . If there are any who
cannot or will not work the mine for themselves, the know
ledge of what I show them out of it will be better than total
ignorance. In most of my hearers I hope that the specimens
I exhibit will excite a thirst for research on their own part,
rather than a less worthy content with the result of the labour
of others .
How best to study the Materia Medica — i.e ., the catalogues
of pathogenetic symptoms — is a question of importance. I
would advise you to read three excellent papers on the sub
ject. The first is by Dr. Constantine Hering, in the second
volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy ; the second
by Dr. Carroll Dunham , in his tractate entitled Homoeopathy
the Science of Therapeutics (1863) ; the third by Dr. Madden,
read before the Birmingham Congress of 1870, and printed
 INTRODUCTORY . 15

in the Monthly Homeopathic Review of that year. The

methods they respectively advocate may be described as those
of simple comparison, of physiological analysis, and of patho
logical relation. Dr. Hering would have us learn to know
our medicines as a forester comes to know every tree within
his range. Dr. Dunham would impress each upon our minds
by penetrating to its inmost character. Dr. Madden would
group them around morbid conditions, and study their patho
genetic effects in reference thereto, so that “the knowledge
of the entire action of any medicine should be left as the
ultimate result of a completed study of pathological pheno
mena.” All these methods have their value. The two former
are best suited to those who are yet students, the last to those
who are already in practice. Perhaps the comparative
method of Dr. Hering may go best with these lectures, as I
shall be myself occupying Dr. Dunham's ground in delivering
them .
A few words in conclusion upon the nomenclature and
pharmaceutics I shall employ in these lectures, which will
necessarily be those of Homeopathy.
I. If any of you have read much of homeopathic literature,
you must have been surprised at our many singularities in
the matter of nomenclature. That the liquid now known as
Hydrochloric acid we style Muriatic might be passed over as
of little importance. But it seems strange that we should
talk of China and Chininum sulphuricum instead of Cinchona
and Sulphate of Quinine, and of Mercurius instead of Hydrar
gyrum . Still more strange is our retention of the old names
Kali and Natrum , so long superseded in ordinary parlance by
Potassa and Soda. And the apparent uncouthness is crowned
by the phraseology used to designate the chemical salts, e.g.,
Ammonium carbonicum , Antimonium tartaricum , Argentum
nitricum , Calcarea acetica and phosphorica, Magnésia muri
atica, and Natrum sulphuricum . Perhaps, at aa first glance,
all may not recognise under these titles their old acquaintances
Carbonate of ammonia , Tartar emetic, Nitrate of silver,
 INTRODUCTORY .
16
Acetate and Phosphate of lime, Chloride of magnesium , and
SulTh e te
pha atiaon. of this singularity is easy to find . At the
lansod
expof
time when Homeopathy first arose , our present nomenclature
prevailed throughout Europe. The medicines were proved ,
and took their places in the Materia Medica , under their
ancient names . In this form the converts to the new doctrine
received them : under these titles they spoke and thought of
them . It would have seemed little less than sacrilege to alter
the familiar names because modern chemistry had rechristened
its compounds. Perhaps if Germany , the mother -land of our
system , had revised the nomenclature of her drugs, other
countries might have followed in her wake. But the German
Pharmacopæia , whether Allopathic or Homeopathic, still
retains the ancient names . And so we also have them un
and even name our newly proved medicines — e.g. Kali
alt hrod mic
bicere ; um - according to their analogy.
But the explanation does not in this case contain in itself
the justification of the usage . If you should feel disposed to
protest against the retention of such obsolete and often
cacophonous forms, I cannot but sympathise with you ; for I
myself felt of much the same mind in my early days of
Homeopathy, and I retain my sentiment still . I have con
tented myself, however, with things as they are for the
lowing
fol1st. s : lature is of historical value ; it tells of the
sonenc
Ourreanom
pla of our ori , of the rock whence we were hewn and the
ce gin
pit from which we were dug. The preservation of names
involving history is much thought of elsewhere ; one must
attach some little importance to it here.
2nd. It affords a bond of union to homeopathists in all
parts of the world . It is like the Latin language to the
learned in the middle ages. Each country is free to revise
its pharmacological nomenclature independently ; and, to a
great extent, has done so. If a German or French book is.
translated into English , many of the names of the drugs have
 INTRODUCTORY . 17

to be explained. It is not so in Homeopathic literature : we

:

speak a language universally intelligible.

3rd. It is like the Latin tongue, not to the learned only, but
to the Church . While the Roman Empire was one, the
public Offices were, as a matter of course, recited in Latin.
When it fell to pieces, and separate nations, each with its own
language, began to rise out of the ruins, some may have
desired that the Service books should be rendered every
where into the vernacular. But such a step would have been
most unwise. The Church held on to her original and un
alterable tongue, and would not commit her prayers to the
ever changing and endlessly varying dialects of the nations
in her communion. The wisdom of her course is obvious :
and the retention of our ancient nomenclature rests on the
same grounds. Chemistry is perpetually and necessarily
changing her names, and the adoption of her suggestions is
not simultaneous in all countries. So, while each national
Pharmacopæia speaks a drug -dialect of its own , Homeopathy
holds on to the changeless mother-tongue, and her words are
comprehensible by all alike.
You will have anticipated me in suggesting that this
parallel must ultimately tell the other way — that a time did
come at last when the demand for vernacular offices of
worship was no longer unwise, but most just and righteous ;
and that so it must be here. I grant it fully. When Che
mistry has finally made up her mind as to the nature of the
compounds she studies, and when the nomenclature she sug
gests has met with general acceptance, and has stood firm for
many years, then it will be our duty to translate our present
language into one understanded of the people. To do so
earlier would just be to quit our vantage -ground, and commit
ourselves to the waves of change and confusion .
That this time has now come has been maintained with
much ability by Dr. Hutchinson, in a paper on “ Our Nomen-.
clature, ” in the twenty -fourth volume of the British Journal
of Homeopathy. I cannot, however, assent to his conclu
>

2
18 INTRODUCTORY .

sions. When the latest edition of the British Pharmacopoeia

converts calomel and corrosive sublimate into the subchloride
and perchloride of mercury , after they had so long been known
as the chloride and bichloride respectively, I see no perma
nence yet in chemical nomenclature. For practical purposes,
I think it better to go on calling them Mercurius dulcis and
Mercurius corrosivus, as we have done from the beginning.
The principles of our nomenclature of the chemical salts are
very simple. Instead of making two substantives of the base
and the acid, putting the former into the genitive and the
latter into the nominative case, we throw the acid into the
adjectival form , with an ending in " ic.” Thus,, instead of
Magnesiæ carbonas, we have Magnesia carbonica ; instead of
Antimonii tartras, Antimonium tartaricum . The last
revision of her nomenclature made by Chemistry is a return
in this direction . “Mercurous iodide ” is very similar to
“Mercurius iodatus, " and "Baric carbonate ” to “ Baryta
carbonica ."
II. So much for our nomenclature ; and now a few words
upon Pharmaceutics. I have no intention of entering into
the minute details which belong rather to the chemist than
to the physician. I just want you to know what it is you are
prescribing when you order this attenuation of a vegetable or
that of a mineral substance . We have now an excellent
Pharmacopæia :* and to this I refer you for the full informa
tion of which here I give you an outline.
The object of Homeopathic pharmacy is so to prepare each
substance that the whole of its active virtues shall be present
in a form suitable for administration. In the case of vege
table substances this is always done, when practicable, by
expressing the juice of the whole plant, and mixing it with
alcohol in which the residue has been steeped for some hours.
When the plant can only be procured in the dry state, or

* ' British Homeopathic Pharmacopæia ,' published by the British

Homeopathic Society. 1870. 2nd edition , 1875.
 INTRODUCTORY . 19

when but little juice is obtainable by pressure, a tincture is

made from it by percolation . The resulting tincture in each
case is arranged to contain the medicinal substance in the
proportion of about one part in ten. This is what is dis
pensed as the “ mother-tincture," and is ordinarily represented
by the Greek 9 or 0. From it are prepared the “ dilutions,”
" potencies, " or (as best called ) “ attenuations." The 1st is
made by adding one part of the mother-tincture to nine of
alcohol ; the 2nd by mixing one part of the 1st with nine of
alcohol ; and so on up to the 6th. These dilutions are on
what is called the “decimal scale ;” and the 2nd, 4th, and 6th
decimal obviously correspond with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of a
centesimal scale, i.e. in which the dilutions are prepared in
the proportion of one to ninety -nine. This latter being the
method originally in use , its nomenclature is preferred when
practicable. So that throughout these letters, when an atten
uation is mentioned, you will understand that the centesimal
scale is intended . When I mean the decimal, I will say so.
The usefulness of this latter scale is that it gives us dilutions
intermediate between 0 and 1 , and between 1 and 2, which
are written 1* and 3* respectively. After 3 such intermediate
stages are unnecessary, and the further dilution may always
be proceeded with upon the centesimal scale.
The mineral substances used in our practice are differently
prepared according as they are soluble or not. In the former
case the dilutions are made with water, which is also the
vehicle of the mineral acids. The metals themselves, and
their insoluble salts, are prepared by the Hahnemannic pro
cess of trituration . This consists in rubbing up a grain of the
substance with nine grains of sugar of milk to form the first
trituration , a grain of this with nine grains more of sugar of
milk for the 2nd, and so on to the 6th . After the 6th decimal
the further dilution is carried on according to the centesimal
scale, and is commonly effected by solution . A grain of the
3rd trituration is dissolved in fifty drops of water, and to this
are added fifty drops of alcohol . A drop of this fourth dilu
20 INTRODUCTORY .

tion is mixed with ninety -nine drops of alcohol for the fifth
potency, and so on. Long ago , however, Dr. Madden advised *
that all the potencies of insoluble substances should be pre
pared by trituration ; and the recommendation has recently
been carried into effect with some of them in Germany.
Struck by the remarkable development of medicinal power
obtained by this process of trituration — even such inert bodies
as the metals becoming actively pathogenetic and curative ,
Hahnemann was led to employ it in the preparation of several
vegetable substances, as Lycopodium and Charcoal, with the
result of elevating them to a high rank as medicines. The
process of trituration is also resorted to in the case of such
products as Coral and Sponge, and (as an alternative to a
tincture prepared by percolation ) of such dry plants or por
tions of plants as Ipecacuanha and Nux vomica .
The globules or pilules used in homeopathic practice are
small spheres of sugar of milk, prepared by immersion for
some time in the tincture of the drug they are intended to
represent. The former were introduced by Hahnemann to
reduce still farther the quantity of the drug administered ;
the latter perform no such office, and are employed simply
for convenience. Both labour under the objection of being
second-hand preparations;; and we cannot desire to furnish an
additional element of uncertainty to a process already so
perilously delicate as that of attenuation. Tinctures and
triturations are the form in which our drugs are most gene
rally used, and to my mind are greatly preferable ..
* British Journal of Homeopathy, v, 372-3.
 LECTURE II.

THE ACIDS .

We proceed now to the consideration of the several sub

stances constituting the Homeopathic Materia Medica .
Various classifications of these have been adopted by teachers
and writers, as the order in which they should be discussed.
I venture to think that all these, whether based on natural
history, on physiological action, or on therapeutic proper
ties, assume more relation between drugs than really exists.
In homeopathy we are led to regard each drug as an indi
vidual, and it will be more in accordance with the genius of
this system to adopt an order which assumes nothing as to
the action of its constituents. This is, obviously, the alphabe
tical.
Most homeopathic authors, in adopting this plan, begin
with Aconite, and at once plunge therewith into the very
thickest of the fight. I shall ask your previous attention to
the acids used in our practice. In Hahnemann and Jahr
these are named after the substance which yields them, as
Nitri acidum , Sulphuris acidum , and so forth ; and take
place in the alphabetical list accordingly. I much prefer
grouping them all together ; and their names will then stand
first on our list. We shall gain this advantage thereby,
that several minor yet not unimportant medicines will have
come under our notice, and will have initiated us in the study
of Materia Medica on Hahnemannian principles, ere we grapple
with one of the most eminent of the series .
The first medicine we shall consider, therefore, is
22 ACIDUM BENZOICUM .

Acidum benzoicum .
This acid, obtained by sublimation from the Styrax
Benzoin , is officinal in its crystalline state. It is dissolved in
rectified spirit to form the Homeopathic tincture.
Nothing was known of the physiological effects of Benzoic
acid ( save the alteration of the urine which it causes) till it
was proved by the American Institute of Homeopathy.
The report of these experiments, by Dr. Jeanes, is contained
in the Transactions of the Institute for 1846, and CCin Esrey's
Materia Medica of American Provings. An arrange
ment" of our knowledge concerning the drug based thereupon
forms one of Hering's Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen , and
may be read in English in Dr. Shipman's translation of
v. Grauvogl's Text- Book of Homeopathy. It contains many
additional observations.
The pathogenesis of Benzoic acid does not lend itself
readily to interpretation or analytic statement. It is one of
those which is utilised therapeutically rather by the à poste
riori than by the à priori method of homeopathising . The
account to be given of it is therefore the statement of what
application has been made of it to practice.
After taking Benzoic acid in quantity, Hippuric acid
appears in the urine. This is merely a chemical charge, as
Hippuric acid under the influence of acids is converted into
Benzoic acid and gelatine sugar, and the opposite transfor
mation has every opportunity and material for its occurrence .
It was supposed, however, by Mr. Alexander Ure that in this
process the lithic acid of the urine disappeared ; and hence he
proposed to use Benzoic acid in gouty subjects to prevent
concretions and calculi. Later investigations have not con
firmed this observation as to lithic acid, nor Dr. Garrod's
statement that under these circumstances the urea is dimi.
nished . But Lehmann has demonstrated that the Benzoic is
one of the few acids which manifestly increase the acidity
of the urine. It has accordingly been used, with decided
 ACIDUM BENZOICUM . 23

temporary benefit, in cases of irritable bladder with alkaline

urine and muco -purulent or phosphatic deposits.
The dynamic properties of the drug seem to centre at the
same spot. Dr. Jeanes has found a deep red (almost brown )
colour of the urine, and a great intensification of its natural
odour, an almost unfailing characteristic for the drug. A
minute dose even will change these features of the secretion ,
and therewith ameliorate the morbid conditions associated
with them . Among these he mentions especially syphilitic
and gonorrheal affections occurring after suppression of the
primary symptoms, but also recurring quinsy and nephritic
colic, infantile diarrhea, ulcerations of the mouth and tongue,
and rheumatic and gouty arthritis. In all these, Benzoic
acid , prescribed mainly because of the presence of the
characteristic urine, relieved greatly or cured. Subsequent
experience and testimonies are in the same direction. In
the enuresis of children * and old persons where this condi.
tion is present ; in dysuria similarly accompanied ;+ and in
acute articular rheumatism having the same feature, I the
drug has been found of the utmost value. Dr. Guernsey
states that the odour of the urine is more characteristic than
the colour, and that it must be present when the urine is
freshly voided.
These are the main uses of Benzoic acid ; but aa few miscel.
laneous observations must be added .
1. Wood thinks that “ it is probably upon Benzoic acid
that the balsams depend mainly for their virtues, and espe
cially for the effects they produce by fumigation.” As
regards these balsams, Trousseau and Pidoux say that they
affect the respiratory mucous membrane as the turpentines
the urinary. Pereira has repeatedly tried the acid in chronic
* North Am. Journ . of Hom ., iii, 334. Marcy and Peters, p. 14.
† Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 489.
1 Von Grauvogl's Text Book (Engl. transl.), ii, 127. It is much used
in this disease in the Leopoldstadt Hospital at Vienna ( Annals, iv, 514 ).
 24 ACIDUM CARBOLICUM .

bronchial affections, but has more frequently seen it augment

than relieve the cough . *
2. Hering says that “ the more Benzoic acid is used in
gout the more it will be prized.” He also considers that the
direction of its symptoms from right to left, and from above
downwards, indicate it as a remedy which will bring diseases >
from within outwards; and hence that it is an “ antipsoric,”
i.e. useful in chronic maladies where determination to the
skin is a first step towards cure. This sounds faneiful, but
Dr. Hering is a shrewd observer.
3. Dr. Bayes states that he has rapidly cured with it a case
of tendinous swelling at the back of the wrist. I have several
times seen such a ganglion much reduced in size by the
external application of the drug in the proportion of five
grains to aa drachm of lard .
4. Dr. Ringer recommends ten to twenty grains of the acid
in half a pint of water as a lotion to relieve the itching
of urticaria .

The chemical action of Benzoic acid seems attainable with

about ten -grain doses. Its homeopathic uses have been
carried on with quantities varying from gr. th to the 3rd
and higher dilutions.
I have next to speak of
Acidum carbolicum .
The best preparation is probably a solution in alcohol.
Some excellent provings of this substance have been made
in America. They are collected , with numerous other observa
tions, pathogenetic and clinical, in the fourth volume of the
Pathogénésies Nouvelles which are appended to the Biblio
thèque Homeopathique. This article also contains a " schema"
* “ Schreiber took in two days about half an ounce of the acid, and suf
fered . . . an increase of the pnlse-rate amounting to thirty beats per minute,
with increased secretion and excretion of pblegm ” (H. C. Wood).
 ACIDUM CARBOLICUM .

of the drug compiled by Dr. Temple Hoyne. There is a good

account of its physiological action in Dr. Wood's treatise.
It is needless to speak here of the action of Carbolic acid as
an antiseptic and as a local anesthetic. These are properties
of the substance which medical men of all schools can and do
utilize . Our present interest is with its dynamic influences
and specific remedial powers.
The most marked symptoms of poisoning by this acid are
those of the nervous centres, which are congested and pros
trated by it, so that coma and paralysis result. In animals
clonic convulsions are not uncommon , which seem to be
epileptiform in seat and character. In the provers, these
effects take the milder form of languor of mind and body,
with headache and vertigo and sometimes spinal pain and
tenderness. The headache implies great fulness of the cerebral
vessels, being generally compared to a sensation as if a tight
band were stretched around the forehead and temples. Some
times it becomes neuralgic in character, and is then especially
felt over the right eye. We then have marked effects upon
the stomach . Vomiting is often produced, even when the
acid has been absorbed from a wound ; and flatulent disten
sion , causing frequent sighing, is a constant symptom with
the provers . One of these speaks of himself as suffering
throughout his experiments from a veritable acute dyspepsia,
though the doses he took were too small to produce any local
caustic effect. These are the main seats of its action in the
provers ; but experiments on animals give us also fatty
degeneration of the liver and kidneys, with epithelium and
albumen in the urine ; keratitis and conjunctivitis ; and
post-mortem - pseudo-membranous and purulent inflamma
tion of the bronchial tubes, with disseminated lobular pneu
monia or else congestion of the lungs. It is not certain how
far the human body is susceptible of these actions.
Of the therapeutic powers of Carbolic acid we know little
as yet ; but, so far as they go, they correspond with its patho
genetic action . It is especially in gastric affections that it
26 ACIDUM FLUORICUM .

has been found useful,-in vomiting (H. C. Wood) and

flatulent distension ( Ringer) in the old school ; and in some
complicated dyspepsias in homeopathic practice. Migraine,
moreover, when the pain is seated above the right eye, has
yielded to its use. Its physiological influence on the skin is
uncertain, though itching and vesiculo -pustular eruptions
occasionally appeared among the provers. But it has been
found very useful, not only in such forms of cutaneous dis
order, but also (by my friend Dr. Guerin Meneville, of Paris)
in psoriasis.*
It can hardly be doubted that more has yet to be made of
this potent agent. What it can do against purulent forma
tions and malignant febrile and inflammatory conditions is
probably due to its antiseptic influence, and needs material
doses of the acid itself or of the sulpho-carbolates. My
friend Dr. Cooper has communicated to me an excellent cure
of hepatic abscess and dysentery thus effected. A female
prover experienced great relief from a lumbo-sacral pain
which had long troubled her. The head symptoms, more
over , are so strikingly apoplectic that some use ought to be
made of the analogy. It seems once at least to have cured
acute hydrocephalus.
Carbolic acid compares with Gelseminum in its action on the
nervous centres, with Carbo vegetablis and (naturally) Krea
sote in the gastric sphere.
Its homeopathic cures have been effected with the dilutions
from the first to the third .

The next in order is

Acidum fluoricum .
This acid - more strictly Hydrofluoric - is not used in
ordinary practice. The primary dilutions of it for homæo
pathic use are, of course, prepared with water .
* See his translation of the second edition of this Manual, p. 32.
 ACIDUM FLUORICUM. 27

The knowledge of the caustic action of Fluoric acid is to

be obtained from books on chemistry. But the homeo
pathic school possesses an exhaustive proving of the dilute
acid . It was conducted by Dr. Hering, and appears in Esrey's
collection .
This is another pathogenesis of which no general account
can give an adequate idea. But the main curative sphere
of Fluoric acid has been ascertained by applying certain of
its indications to practice. It may be defined as consisting
in chronic irritations of mucous membrane, and in morbid
conditions of the more lowly organized tissues. Cases are on
record in which the acid, in the dilutions from the 5th dec.
upward, has proved curative of chronic diarrhea, of secondary
syphilis of the throat and tongue,* and of osseous caries.t
These are from Dr. Laurie's pen : but in Hering's article we
read how under the use of the drug whitlows have been
blighted , fistula - lachrymal and dental - have closed, varicose
veins have shrunk to half their size, fresh hair has grown on
a bald head, and moist palms have regained their healthy
dryness. Chronic nasitis also has been cured, and rectal
troubles alleviated. Other directions in which it may pro
fitably be applied will probably appear.
The following seem to be prominent among its physiological
effects :
1. Disagreeable and inimical mood.
2. Sense in the brain as if on the verge of being struck by
apoplexy. ( After smelling the strong acid . The first effect
was to irritate the throat :: then an influence seemed to pass to
the brain .)
3. Dull, heavy headache.
4. Retinal excitement, with red photopsia.
5. Urine of strong odour (once with purple sediment).
6. Great excitement of the sexual instinct in men, and, in a
woman , premature appearance of the catamenia .
* Brit . Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 154.
† Laurie, ' Elements of Homeopathic Practice of Physic,' 609.
28 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM.

7. Pains in the bones generally.

8. Numbness and lameness of the hands.
9. Itching and redness of old cicatrices of the skin .
10. Perspiration, glutinous or sour.
M. Maumené has lately been led from his observations and
experiments to believe that the cause of goitre is the presence
of fluorides in drinking water. He asserts that they are
peculiarly abundant in the water of goitrous districts . In
corroboration of his views he cites an experiment in which a
true and permanent bronchocele was established in a dog by
a five months' course of Fluoride of potassium .* This is a
hint not to be neglected.
I have already mentioned the doses in which this acid
has been given in homeopathic practice. It is a close
analogue of Silicea, of which we shall have hereafter to
speak.

I have now a more familiar drug to introduce to you,

Acidum hydrocyanicum .
“ Equal measures of the officinal acid ” which contains 2
per cent. of anhydrous prussic acid “and rectified spirit will
make the first centesimal dilution :" so writes the British
Homeopathic Pharmacopæia .
Hydrocyanic acid has not been proved in the school of
Hahnemann . But an excellent proving of it has been
furnished by Professor Jörg, in which it was tested on
twenty -seven persons. Some of the numerous cases of
poisoning by this agent have been collated, and their physio
logical and therapeutical significance analysed, in a paper
on the acid by Dr. Madden and myself in the twentieth
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy, to which
reference may be made for more details than can find place
here .

* Med . Times and Gax. , May 5th, 1866.

 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM . 29

This potent poison, reputed in many disorders since its

discovery in 1782, appears in Ringer's Handbook as some
times relieving pain and vomiting in chronic gastric diseases ;
and that is all.” In homeopathic practice it is very rarely
mentioned . I venture to think that this is undeserved
neglect; and that we have in Hydrocyanic acid , given
according to the law of similars, a very useful medicine.
It should be so, indeed , according to its physiological action,
which pictures several severe diseases .
1. The first of these is epilepsy. There is a large consensus
of authority as to the essential similarity between the pheno
mena of poisoning with this acid and the epileptic paroxysm .
Pereira, Christison, and Taylor all affirm it, and it need not
be argued afresh here. The first case of poisoning we have
cited in our paper was taken by the medical attendant for an
epileptic fit ; and there is nothing surprising in the mistake.
The sudden falling and loss of consciousness, the subsequent
laryngismus, empurpled face, foam at the mouth, and convul
sions together form a perfect picture of the attack of this
disease . Excitation of the cervical sympathetic, which is now
regarded as (through the contraction of the cerebral arteries
it produces) the proximate cause of epilepsy, was undoubtedly
present in this case , as indicated by the dilated pupils, with
prominent, glistening eyeballs. Pereira's statement seems to
be correct, that “whatever be the precise pathological con
dition of the brain in poisoning by this drug, it is probably
identical with that which occurs during an epileptic paroxysm,
and with that produced by loss of blood ." The sensations
in the head described by provers are in entire harmony
with this view, and forcibly suggest the epileptic vertigo.
The inference from these facts drawn by Dr. Madden and
myself was that Hydrocyanic acid ought to find a very
prominent place among anti- epileptic remedies ; and our early
practical results were very encouraging. But Dr. Russell*
Clinical Lectures, p. 262.
30 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM .

has noted the weak point in this medicine when he points out
the evanescent character of its action . It is only in recent
epilepsies that we found permanent results from it. Indeed ,
in chronic cases there are generally changes in the nervous
centre which go beyond the range of the purely functional
action of Hydrocyanic acid, and require remedies of profounder
working. Nevertheless, as there are cases of long standing
on record - Frank (I. 320) cites four-in which the acid
proved curative, it must not be dropped out of sight until
we can define its place.
2. Secondly, Hydrocyanic acid causes undoubted tetanus.
There is not, as with Strychnia, evidence of increased reflex
excitability ; but, as with Aconite and Cicuta, persistent tonic
spasm. This it produces by direct action upon the spinal cord ;
for, when the cord was divided (by Wedemeyer ) between the
last dorsal and the first lumbar vertebræ, and Prussic acid
introduced into one of the hind legs, these, as well as the fore
legs, were immediately convulsed .
We have thus in our medicine another anti- tetanic. The
only instance of its use of which I am aware is a case of the
traumatic form of the disease successfully treated by Dr.
George Moore with drop-doses of Scheele's acid . * The curative
action here seems undoubted .
3. The tonic spasm excited by Hydrocyanic acid is nowhere
more marked than in the organs of respiration. This also
is the general testimony of toxicologists. “ Spasmodic
respiration ” is noted by all observers of acute poisoning ;
and Wood mentions among the chronic effects of the vapour
difficult respiration, constriction of throat, feelings of suffo
cation.” “ The only marked post-mortem phenomenon ” he
writes “ is a universal venous congestion, proving that the
circulation had been arrested in the lungs."
Now it is in spasmodic disorders of the respiratory organs
that, next to gastric affections, Hydrocyanic acid has ob
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 506.
 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM . 31

tained its chief reputation. In whooping -cough Dr. West

says that " it sometimes exerts an almost magical influence,
diminishing the frequency and severity of the paroxysms
almost immediately .” In recent and uncomplicated asthma
I have a high opinion of it ; it is to this disease as to
epilepsy. Dr. Russell, in his work on Epidemic Cholera ,
relates a case in which it gave great and speedy relief to an
intense spasmodic oppression of the chest, which came on in
a cholera patient.
4. Any poison which through the nervous centres can
affect the respiration is capable through the same channels
(pneumogastric and others) of disturbing the action of the
heart. Hence the palpitations, præcordial pain and anxiety,
diminished pulse, and tendency to syncope, noted alike in
poisonings and provings by this acid .
The value of Prussic acid in cardiac affections is fairly
stated in this sentence of Dr. Wood's. “ In palpitation and
other irregularities in the function of the organ, of no very
energetic character, whether purely nervous or associated
with organic disease, I know no medicine better calculated to
alleviate the disturbance of the function, and afford ease and
comfort to the patient." Dr. Chapman suggested its use in
angina pectoris, which is indeed of a piece with the gastro
dynia and enterodynia in which it has proved so useful.
There are testimonies extant to its efficacy . *
5. It is not so easy to account for the virtue of Hydro
cyanic acid in affections of the stomach. Some of these
as its power to allay the pain and vomiting of chronic gastric
disease -- may be due to its local benumbing effect. It does
not cause vomiting pathogenetically . But the brilliant and
permanent cures of gastrodynia and enterodynia recorded by
Pereira , Elliotson , and Granville point beyond this. They
are of a specific character, and, as with whooping -cough , the
beneficial effects are sometimes astonishing, while sometimes

* Marcy and Peters, p. 35.

32 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM .

there is utter failure. Whether in the instances of success

the pains are from spasm, and therefore the acid homæo
pathic ; while in those of disappointment they are neuralgic,
I cannot say. If it were so, I should apply the same principle
to the treatment of angina pectoris.
There is good evidence of the action of Hydrocyanic acid
on the solar plexus. Sir B. Brodie applied one drop of the
essential oil of bitter almonds to his tongue. He imme
diately felt a remarkable and unpleasant sensation at the
epigastrium , with such weakness in the limbs and loss of
power in the muscles, that he thought he should have fallen .
I have frequently removed by it the distressing feeling
<
known as sinking at the stomach , " when this has been
unconnected with the climacteric age.
The outline of the sphere of Hydrocyanic acid is now very
clearly before us. It affects the whole cranio -spinal axis
and associated sympathetic ganglia, setting up that disturb
ance which induces tonic spasm in the muscles. Hence the
phenomena of head, heart, lungs, stomach, and trunk in
general; and hence its therapeutic value in similar idiopathic
conditions. It will be a profitable task if any one will under
take from study of the provings and from clinical observation
to fill in this outline, and define for us the precise place of the
medicine in specific therapeutics.
For its action on the spinal cord Hydrocyanic acid may be
compared with Aconite and Strychnia. As an epileptifacient,
its only analogues are the Umbelliferæ — Cicuta virosa and
Enanthe crocata .
I have generally used Hydrocyanic acid in the dilutions
from the third to the sixth decimal. The experience of the
ordinary practice would seem to show that in whooping-cough
and gastrodynia the first attenuation may be used with
advantage.

As the salts of Hydrocyanic acid and the plants containing

it owe their active properties to its presence, it will be well
 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM . 33

to consider here any that demand our notice. I shall speak

only of the Cyanide of Potassium among the former, and of
the Cherry -laurel among the latter : others are probably con
formable to these types.
Kali cyanidum . - As a poison this salt seems identical with
Hydrocyanic acid . It has been proved, in the first and third
attenuations, by two members of the Massachusetts Homco
pathic Society (1861–2) : the record of their experiments
may be read in the twenty -second volume of the British
Journal of Homæopathy (p. 496 ). It presents little that is
noteworthy. My only reason for mentioning the drug is that
in the hands of the late Dr. Petroz it effected a remarkable
cure of disease of the tongue, which may be cited here :
“ In 1829 a woman living in the Rue St. Nicolas, whose
family was known to me, came to ask my advice about a dis
ease of the tongue, for which she had been under the care of
Dr. L'Herminier. The organ was profoundly altered by an
ulcer, which appeared to me cancerous, and which occupied
its right side ; the edges, especially posteriorly, were indu
rated , raised and knotty ; speech was difficult, indistinct, and
accompanied with much pain. The patient could only take
liquid nourishment. Distrusting my own diagnosis,, I sent
her to Professor Marjolin. She brought me back the follow
ing judgment: " Cancerous ulcer ; no chance of cure but
from operation ; and this impossible, for the base of the
tongue is involved .'
“ In the presence of so grave a disease, I turned my thoughts
to diminish her sufferings. I prescribed the Tigth of a grain
of Hydrocyanate of Potassa, to be repeated every fourth day.
After fifteen days I again saw the patient. She suffered less ;
the tongue appeared to me not so thick, the edges less hard,
the speech easier. The medicine was continued in the same
way. Fifteen days later the patient, whose countenance had
lost its grey hue and drawn features, said to me with joy,
' I begin to be able to eat a crumb of bread .' The Hydro
cyanate was continued for aa month longer, when the cure was
3
34 ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM .

complete. It is now eighteen years ago and there has been

no relapse."
Laurocerasus. — The Cherry -laurel has found a place of its
own in homeopathic medicine, from having been proved in an
elaborate manner by Professor Jörg and his pupils, and sub
sequently by Drs. Hartlaub and Trinks. The article on the
drug in the first volume of the latter's Arzneimittellehre
contains Jörg's symptoms and their own, with many obser
vations of poisoning and overdosing. A tincture is prepared
for homeopathic practice ; but the distilled water (Aqua
laurocerasi) is generally the favourite preparation .
I am myself unable to see in either the pathogenetic or
the curative effects of Laurocerasus anything specifically
distinct from those of Hydrocyanic acid . It has, moreover ,
the disadvantage of very uncertain strength. Nevertheless,
Dr. Phillips seems to have used it with good effect in the
gastric, cardiac, and respiratory affections for which the acid
itself is recommended. His doses are from 5 to 30 minims
of the distilled water.
6
* · Études de Thérapeutique,' &c. Ed. Cretin .
 LECTURE III .

THE ACIDS (continued) .

We shall speak to -day of the mineral acids — the Muriatic,
Nitric, Phosphoric, and Sulphuric - with one of vegetable
origin , the Oxalic. And first of

Acidum muriaticum .

This is of course the acid now called Hydrochloric. The

attenuations are necessarily aqueous,-10 minims of the acid of
the British Pharmacopæia with 21 minims of distilled water
making the l* dilution.
Nothing is known in extra -homeopathic literature of the
physiological action (save the local poisonous effects) of Muria
tic acid . Hahnemann's proving of it first appears in the
fifth volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 61
symptoms of his own , 196 from six fellow observers, and 22
from authors. A later pathogenesis in the fourth volume of
the Chronic Diseases adds 295 symptoms more, contributed
by Hahnemann himself and two others (Rummel' and Non
ning ).
I have already explained why I can make no use of these
latter provings. Moreover, since the attenuations of the acid
are directed to be made with diluted alcohol for the first, and
undiluted subsequently — a process which would go far to
change it into ether - even the symptoms of Hahnemann and
his fellow provers in the Materia Medica Pura are somewhat
vitiated as indications for the use of true Muriatic acid.
Again, the twenty -two symptoms (made into twenty -four in
the Chronic Diseases) from authors are strangely irrelevant
36 ACIDUM MURIATICUM .

for their purpose and incongruous with their surroundings ..

Hahnemann himself tells us of some as the effect of " Aqua
oxymuriatica, ” i.e. solution of Chlorine (Schmidtmuller, Craw
ford , Sachse, Humboldt), of others as the troubles of workmen
in salt -mines ( Ramazzini) ; while sneezing and cough with
hæmoptysis are the local effects of inhaling the acid in gaseous
form ( Theiner, &c.) .
Happily, our clinical experience is sufficient to define pretty
closely its sphere of action. This may be said to be a low
febrile condition of the blood, with ulceration of mucous mem
branes and eczema of neighbouring cutaneous surfaces. Its use
in low fever is common to both schools of medicine. Of old,
its action in these cases was ascribed to a power of modifying
a supposed putrescence of the fluids ; and the medicine was
given also in malignant scarlatina and putrid sore throat.
Now -a -days its use seems pretty well confined to true “ fever,”
and it is considered to act by neutralizing superabundant
alkali (Richardson ) or by supplying deficient acid (Chambers ).
I am disposed to believe that its (undoubted ) action in this
malady is, after all, dynamic : for it is certain that Muriatic
acid , in doses too small to exert any chemical action , has a
very high reputation in homeopathic practice as a remedy
for low fever. Dr. Trinks * warmly commends it in the first
dilution ) in the type known as nervosa versatilis,” where it
does great things in calming and cooling. Teste also extols
it later on, to modify the intestinal ulceration, over which he
thinks it has as much power as when the same morbid con
dition exists in the mouth or throat. He says that “ the
almost constant and frequently immediate effect of this drug is
to modify the character of the intestinal secretions, and to
take away their foul smell ; and, after this result is accom
plished , almost all the other symptoms improve, and the
course of the malady is considerably shortened.” With
this coincides, from another point of view, the testimony

* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxix, 293.

 ACIDUM MURIATICUM . 37

of Dr. George Johnson.* He thinks that the diarrhoea of

typhoid may well be increased by the mineral acids (usually
the hydrochloric ) commonly given ; and ascribes its diminution
at King's College Hospital to their discontinuance.
Bähr, Guernsey, Bayes, and Espanet concur in commending
Muriatic acid in typhoid ; and add to the above as indications
for it, slipping down to the foot of the bed, tendency to invo
luntary evacuations, utter aversion to food, and copious
urination, with putrescent phenomena.
A similar condition of blood and mucous membrane exists
in malignant scarlatina and perhaps in diphtheria. In the
former disease Muriatic acid is of great value for the affec
tions of the nose and ears, especially when they occur as
sequelæ ; and it vies with Mercury in the ulcerations of mouth
and throat. About its action in true diphtheria I cannot
speak with any confidence, though I think (and herein Dr.
Kidd confirms met) that it has some efficacy when symptoms
of blood -poisoning are prominent. The following case by the
late Dr. Russell will show what it can sometimes do here ;
and we should not forget the value set upon it by Bretonneau
as a local application .
“ The case was that of a lady about sixty years of age, who
had been ill for two days. He found the pulse very small
and quick , as high as 130. There was great prostration ;
the expression of the countenance almost like that of cholera ,
from the sunken, exhausted look - very remarkable, consider
ing the shortness of the illness, and indicating the action
of some poison. There was great fætor of the breath , and
on examining the fauces the whole surface was of a dark
red , approaching violet hue, and spotted over with white
raembranous deposit. He gave a drop of the 1st dilution of
Muriatic acid every hour, and next day found great improve
ment. From the first dose the patient was sensible of benefit,
which continued till she got well. The disease had been
* Practitioner, Jan., 1875.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxvii, 742.
38 ACIDUM MURIATICUM .

increasing up to the time of the administration of the medi

cine, and from that time declined.” *
Muriatic acid also plays an important part in ulcerations of
the mouth and throat independent of these acute diseases ,
though probably connected with similar constitutional con
ditions, as indicated by the “ low ” character of the local
mischief. Mercurial sores and aphthæ often come under this
category. It seems to have a special affinity for the tongue.
To this attention has been recently called by Dr. Robert
Cooper.f The symptoms of Letocha in Hahnemann's patho
genesis, which he cites, are not to be found at the place
referred to ; and, until verified, can hardly be relied on as
dynamic effects of the acid. But his cases of cure are quite
valid ; and, embracing as they do induration, fungous swelling,
ulceration, and (supposed) incipient cancer, encourage us to
confident use of the acid in affections of this organ . I have
myself employed it in recurring ulcers of the tongue with the
best effect.
Several other uses of the drug, but all falling within the
general description I have given , are mentioned by Dr. Marcy
in the New Materia Medica . His, too, are the fullest
statements of its usefulness in cutaneous affections, where
itching papules or vesicles seem to indicate it both internally
and externally. Its employment in dyspepsia, so well defined
by Dr. Ringer, seems beyond the sphere of its specific opera
tion. It acts here either by locally checking excess of forma
tion of gastric juice, or by supplying deficient acid to the
digestive process.
Nitric acid is the only medicine with which , as it seems to
me, Muriatic acid can be advantageously compared ; though
it has some points of contact with Baptisia, Ammonium
carbonicum , and perhaps Rhus.
There seems no advantage in raising Muriatic acid above
* Annals, i, 231 .
† United States Med . and Surg. Journal, ix, 268 .
 ACIDUM NITRICUM . 39

the 3rd attenuation ; and the 1st and 2nd decimal are those
most commonly used.

I am coming now upon one of the most important members

of our group
Acidum nitricum .
Ten minims of the acid of the British Pharmacopoeia with
sixty minims of water make our 1x attenuation, which is thus
of about the same strength as the ordinary dilute acid. The
subsequent attenuations must, of course, be aqueous.
Our only pathogenesis of Nitric acid was first published in
the second edition of the Chronic Diseases. It contains
1426 symptoms, of which about 130 were supplied by fellow
provers, and 30 taken from authors, the remaining 1260 being
Hahnemann's own .
The reasons I have alleged for ignoring the pathogeneses of
the Chronic Diseases press with double force in the case of
Nitric acid . Hahnemann's age and practice at the time
make it certain that his symptoms - six sevenths of the
whole - were observed on patients ; and his globules of the
30th have but a doubtful relation to Nitric acid , as alcohol was
used to make the dilutions from the 2nd upwards. His cited
symptoms, moreover, are rarely pure ; being too often observed
upon syphilitic subjects. We thus know very little about
the pathogenetic effects of the drug beyond those of its local
corrosive action . That it causes salivation, sometimes with
the affection of the gums, but always without the fætor
of Mercury, and that it is moderately diuretic, are the only
statements I think we are warranted in making on this score.
Clinical experience with it, however, is large and definite, and
enables its sphere to be assigned with much precision.
1. I would first speak of its action on the muco -cutaneous
outlets , —those parts where mucous membrane is exposed to
the external air, and where skin is so shielded and moistened
that it approximates in character to mucous membrane. Its
40 ACIDUM NITRICUM .

ptyalism and gingivitis suggest its Mercury -like affinity for

the mouth , which is very strong ; it antidotes its analogue
here, and cures ulceration of the buccal mucous membrane.
The same thing may be said of it as regards the throat.
Then, leaping over the intermediate digestive tract, it exhibits
a singular power over the rectum and anus ; it has cured pro
lapsus , fistula , and even fissure. In the respiratory tract it
controls the ocular, nasal, and laryngeal mucous membranes .
Dr. Goullon , in his treatise on Scrofula , assigns it a high
place in the treatment of obstinate strnmous ophthalmia, and
considers it useful in superficial ulcers of the conjunctiva
corneæ , and indispensable in ophthalmia neonatorum . It has
been commended for the affection of the nose which obtains in
malignant scarlatina , for ozæna, and for laryngeal phthisis .
Acting on the genito -urinary membrane, it is a valuable remedy
(according to Dr. Marcy ) for chronic vaginal leucorrhæa in
cachectic subjects ; and has cured a chronic itching of the
urethra left behind after gonorrhea .*
Dr. Hempel truly says that “ Nitric acid is principally
adapted to disease depending upon the presence of some
virulent miasm , especially the scrofulous, syphilitic, and mer.
curial.” But it is chiefly when these muco -cutaneous outlets
are the seat of the mischief that it proves an antidote ; it
hardly penetrates deeper. As regards syphilis, it takes the
place of Mercury in soft chancres occurring in weakly or scro
fulous subjects, and often supplements it in secondary ulcera
tions of the mucous membranes (Jahr extols it also for inflamed
bubo ). It becomes the prime remedy when even a hard
chancre begins to sprout into vegetations, and for the “ mucous
patches " which occur at this stage of the malady, and which
always haunt its favourite seats of action. We are thus led
to that curious offset or ally of syphilis which Hahnemann
distinguished as “ sycosis, " whose local manifestations are
condylomata. Whether he was right or not (he is not alone
* New Mat. Med ., p. 54 .
 ACIDUM NITRICUM . 41

in it) in thinking this a separate disease , at least we do well

in following him as to its remedies ; and these are Thuja and
Nitric acid . * I shall have more to say on the subject when
we come to the former medicine.
2. Next in importance to the foregoing is the action of
Nitric acid on the liver. The experiments of Scott, which first
brought it into notice, related to its power over hepatic dis
ease ; it was only later that they suggested its use in syphilis.
He cured with it chronic hepatitis and the “ liver -cake ” of
ague ; and it has always continued a favourite medicine in
Indian practice. Of late, the combination with Muriatic
acid has been preferred for this purpose. Dr. Horatio Wood
praises this Nitro-muriatic acid for hepatic congestion,
“ biliousness," non -obstructive jaundice, and commencing
cirrhosis ; he says it should always be freshly prepared. It is
also used in baths and compresses. Considering its virtues in
oxaluria also, it deserves a good proving.
3. Of late years, Nitric acid has come to the front as a
remedy for cough. Sir Duncan Gibb has written a book on
pertussis expressly to extol its virtues. Dr. Bayes says
“ Another affection in which Nitric acid has proved service
able is a chronic laryngeal cough, without expectoration,
which is characterised by a stinging or smarting sensation , as
if a small ulcer were there, and is generally felt on one side.
The 3rd dilution of the medicine often speedily arrests and
cures this cough.” I have myself long used it with benefit in
laryngeal coughs, dry and violent. But Dr. Dyce Brown has
recently led us to extend the sphere of this acid in coughs.
He commends it in several forms of disease of which this
symptom is the prominent feature, and especially when there
is much general physical depression. He even extends its
use to pneumonic phthisis after the more active symptoms
have been removed by other means . A good many typical
* “ Small syphilitic warts and condylomata, kept constantly moist with
a wash of diluted nitric acid, are removed certainly and painlessly. A
drachm or two of the dilute acid to a pint of water is sufficient.” (Ringer.)
42 ACIDUM OXALICUM .

cases are related in his communication, which you will find

in the eighteenth volume of the Monthly Homoeopathic
Review . I myself have certainly been led by it to prescribe
Nitric acid more largely in chronic coughs ; and have found
it very beneficial, both to these and to the gastric irritation
and general cachexia which often accompany them .
Dr. Brown mentions constipation as a marked indication
for the acid in cough cases ;; and adds that he has found it so
often to disappear under its use that he has been led to use it
as a remedy for this trouble in itself, and with such success
that he now places it in the front rank of available means in
its treatment. Hahnemann (as Dr. Brown notices) expresses
himself to just the contrary effect, saying that “ it is more
suitable to those chronic patients who are disposed to loose
ness : it is very seldom useful to those who suffer from con
stipation .” It is possible that infinitesimal doses of the acid ,
prepared according to his method, may have an action of their
own .
Nitric acid compares with Muriatic acid, with Mercury, and
with Thuja .
Dr. Brown advises two or three drop doses of the 1st dec.
dilution ; and with this or the potencies near to it all the
successes of Nitric acid have been obtained, save those in the
rectal and anal troubles. Here the 30th Hahnemannian atten
uation is reputed to have effected the cures.
For our next acid we have once more the advantage of a good
pathogenesis ; it is
Acidum oxalicum .
This well - known acid is almost unused in ordinary prac
tice. For homeopathic use it is triturated or dissolved in
rectified spirit.
Our toxicological knowledge of Oxalic acid is both exten
sive, from its frequent use in suicide and ingestion by mistake
for Epsom salts, and precise, from the full experimentation to
which it has been subjected, chiefly by Drs. Christison and
 ACIDUM OXALICUM . 43

Coindet . * It has also received aa full proving (by six persons

taking the 1st and 2nd triturations) under the auspices of the
American Institute.t Arrangements of these materials exist,
from Dr. Neidhard in Esrey's collection, and from Dr. Hering
in his Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen .
Oxalic acid is an irritant poison ; and the great body of the
symptoms induced by its ingestion are due to inflammation
of the alimentary mucous membrane. There is, however, no
evidence of intestinal irritation when the poison is otherwise
introduced into the system ; so that we have here a local
rather than a specific effect . Oxalic acid would thus be truly
homæopathic to irritation of this tract only where it was
of local origin, and would need to be given in semi-material
doses. A Dr. Nardo, of Turin , is reported by Marcy and
Peters to have used it ( in grain doses) with uniform success
for many years in gastritis ; and it has been useful in glossitis
and chronic angina .
When absorbed into the system , its elective affinities mani.
fest themselves in the sphere of the lungs and of the nervous
centres. The former present - post mortem — either scarlet
patches or a uniform scarlet redness over their anterior sur
face, but without effusion ; and the provers had lancinating
pains through them , especially on the left side. The trachea
also has been found reddened after death ; and the provers
experienced some irritation in it. Marcy and Peters men
tion some experience suggestive of its value in chronic inflam
mations of the respiratory mucous membrane, and even in
phthisis pulmonalis.
But the most important action of the poison is that
which it exerts upon the nervous centres. The facts are as
follows :
When administered to animals in such a manner as that it
can be absorbed, " the first unequivocal sign of its action is
generally a slight permanent stiffness of the hind legs and
* Edinb . Med . and Surg. Journ., xix.
+ Transactions, i.
44 ACIDUM OXALICUM ,

increased frequency of the pulse. About the same time

there appears a slight sudden check in inspiration, from the
respiratory muscles contracting before the chest is fully
expanded. Gradually several of these come together, so as to
constitute paroxysms of short, hurried breathing, with in
tervals of ease. Meanwhile the stiffness of the hind legs
increases ; they become likewise insensible, and often the
spasm gives place to paralysis ; he jerks the head occasion
ally backwards, walks with a peculiar stiff gait, and assumes
very odd postures, from inability to regulate the motions of
the limbs. As the poisoning advances, the motions of the
chest during the paroxysms become more and more confined
by spasms of the muscles ; and at last there is a period to
wards the close of each paroxysm , when the spasm is so great
as completely to suspend the respiration. This is commonly
accompanied with more or less extension of the head, tail,
and extremities, sometimes amounting to violent opis
thotonos. • The insensibility, hitherto limited to the
hind legs, now extends to the trunk and fore-legs, and lastly
to the head. As the insensibility increases, the breathing
diminishes in frequency , the spasmodic paroxysms become
more and more obscure, and then cease altogether. For
some time, however, they may be slightly renewed, by
striking the back and limbs ; but at last the animal falls into
a state of deep pure coma, with complete relaxation of the
whole body. The heart can now scarcely be felt ; the breath
ing is low , regular, and short, and becomes gradually more
>

obscure, till finally life is extinguished without a struggle ."

If the dose be larger “ the fits of spasm come on early and
with great violence, the intervals are marked by remissions
only , and the animal expires in a paroxysm , before the stage
of insensibility begins. Death may be produced in this
manner in three, five, or ten minutes. If on the other hand
the dose be much diminished , there may be stiffness of the
hind legs, much dulness, drooping of the whole body, and
a sort of somnolency, without insensibility, or even without
 ACIDUM OXALICUM . 45

spasmodic paroxysms, and then the animal will commonly

recover.”
This summary is taken from the original paper in the
Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal by Drs. Christison
and Coindet. The former, in his Treatise on Poisons, adds
the following as regards the effects of the acid on the human
subject. “ The best instance yet related of the development.
of nervous symptoms in man is a case described by Dr. Scott.
of Cupar, of a girl who swallowed by mistake a solution kept
for cleaning brass, and containing about two drachms. She
did not vomit until emetics were given, but complained much
of pain, which was succeeded by great lassitude and weakness
of the limbs, and next morning by numbness and weakness
there as well as in the back . This affection was at first so
severe that she could hardly walk upstairs ; but in a few days
she recovered entirely. There is also evidence to the same
effect both in Mr. Hebb's patient and in Dr. Arrowsmith's
case . The first thing that the former complained of was
acute pain in the back, gradually extending down the thighs,
occasioning ere long great torture, and continuing almost till
the moment of his death. Dr. Arrowsmith's patient had the
same symptoms, complained more of the pain shooting down
from the loins to the limbs than of the pain in the belly, and
was constantly seeking relief in a fresh change of posture.
Mr. Fraser's patient had from an early period a peculiar
general numbness, approaching to palsy ."
I think there can be no doubt but that the phenomena
thus described are those of inflammation of the membranes
and substance of the cord. In no post-mortem has the
spinal column been opened for examination ; and we thus
want ocular evidence. But the stiffness of the limbs and
paroxysms of spasmodic dyspnea point plainly to irritation
of the spinal meninges ; and the anesthesia , neuralgia, and
loss of power indicate a similar affection of the spinal
marrow itself. I once had the painful duty of watching a.
chronic case of this disease until its termination in death ;
 46 ACIDUM PHOSPHORICUM .

and the symptoms I then observed come vividly back to my

mind as I cite these descriptions of poisoning by Oxalic acid .
I hope that some use may be made of the analogy ; hitherto
it has remained unfruitful.
Christison says that in minimum doses the effect is mainly
on the brain ; and most of the provers seem to have felt it
acting there, especially on the vertex and forehead, where
it causes and has removed) a dull headache. He also
describes it as acting secondarily on the heart, commonly
weakening its action, but in one animal causing strong and
· loud palpitation. The following symptom was caused by it
and verified in practice. "Immediately after lying down in
bed at night, palpitation of the heart for half an hour, three
nights consecutively ." Colic about the navel, with difficult
emission of flatulence, and irritation of the genito -urinary
tract, with diuresis, are other marked symptoms of the
proving ; to which may be added great exhilaration of spirits .
Oxalic acid has more analogies with Argentum nitricum
and Arsenicum than with any other drugs in the Pharma
copoeia .
The 2nd and 3rd triturations seem to have been those
mainly used, though Dr. Marcy speaks well of the 12th.

The acid I am now coming upon is a special favourite of

my own . It is

Acidum phosphoricum .
The “ dilute Phosphoric acid ” of the British Pharmaco
pæia forms our 1x attenuation , and water is used for subse
quent dilutions up to the 2nd centesimal.
The original proving of Phosphoric acid is in the fifth
volume of the Materia Medica Pura . It contains 268 sym
ptoms from Hahnemann himself , and 411 from twelve fellow
observers . A later pathogenesis appears in the fifth part of
the Chronic Diseases. It is increased by 139 symptoms,
most of which are credited to Hering, and were probably
 ACIDUM PHOSPHORICUM . 47

observed on the patients mentioned in the preface as cured by

him with the acid .
Hahnemann's directions for the attenuation of Phosphoric
acid in the Materia Medica Pura are not so destructive as those
for the other acids, as the dilute alcohol of the 1st potency is
to contain nine parts of water to one of spirit. Perhaps the
provings were made with this preparation. At any rate, they
impress one with a greater sense of reality than those of the
other acids ; and Habnemann characterises them as “ remark
able, pure symptoms of artificial disease elicited by Phos
phoric acid in the healthy body.” They will well repay study
and analysis. I shall best help this here by sketching and
characterising the therapeutic action of the drug .
The chief sphere of this is the nervous system ; and the con
dition it influences here is one of debility without erethism
( in this contrasted with China ). When we find brain * or
cord , f sight or hearing thus affected — as from continued
grief, over-exertion, sexual excess, or drain on the system , or
-

remaining after typhus or typhoid 1 - Phosphoric acid is an

>
invaluable remedy, well deserving the name of “ tonic.” It
is to “ nervous debility ” what Iron is to anæmia. In virtue
of this action (as I believe) is its curative power in its two
chief local spheres, the renal and the male sexual organs.
1. Phosphoric acid has no known action on the kidneys
themselves ; but it exerts a remarkable control over those
changes in the composition of the urine which arise farther
tack than the secreting organs. Dr. Sutherland has directed
attention to its usefulness in phosphatic deposits ; it is
obviously indicated for these when , as commonly, depending
on waste of nervous tissue or on alkalinity of urine from
nervous depression . It cures, as Hering || and Chapmanſ have
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vii, 391.
† Bayes, Appl. Hom ., 138.
Monthly Hom . Review , x.
§ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vi, 410.
|| Preface to pathogenesis in Chron . Dis.
[ Brit. Journ. of Hom. , vii, 391 .
 48 ACIDUM PHOSPHORICUM .

pointed out, those derangements in children connected with

a milky state of the renal secretion ; and would probably help
in the West Indian “chylous urine ,” whose constitutional
symptoms are very characteristic of the drug. But it is in
diabetes that Phosphoric acid has won its greenest laurels.
Not only in the " insipid ” form—“ chronic diuresis ” as we
should now call it — but in true glycosuria cure has repeatedly
resulted from the administration of this acid . * It is actually
a similar to the essential symptom of the disease ; for Dr.
Pavy + found saccharine urine to result from its injection into
the general venous system , or introduction into the intestinal
canal ; and Griesinger, who gave it in diabetes to the extent
of an ounce a day, found the sugar increased thereby ( Ringer ).
But the frequent origin of diabetes in the nervous centres
(as suggested by Claude Bernard's well- known experiment )
commends it still more forcibly ; and in the only case in
which I have myself needed it to re -inforce the Nitrate of
Uranium the disease obviously began in this way. It will
therefore be in diabetes of nervous origin that we shall expect
to get the best results from Phosphoric acid . Moreover ,
since Claude Bernard found albuminuria to result from a
central nervous lesion hard by that which occasions diabetes,
there may well be cases of this malady in which Phosphoric
acid is indicated. Two cures by it are on record, -in one of
which the albuminuria was associated with chorea, § and in
the other followed upon typhoid . ||
2. It is the nervous apparatus of the male sexual organs
which is influenced by Phosphoric acid. It has no relation to
their inflammatory states. But in simple debility and relaxa
tion - even to impotence - of these organs, resulting from
excess or unnatural use , it is the most important of remedies .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 260 .
+ On Diabetes, p. 82.
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi, 369.
§ Hempel, ii, 46 .
!| Monthly Hom . Rev., X.
 ACIDUM PHOSPHORICUM . 49

Prequent weak emissions and dragging aching in the testes

may also be removed by it.
This action on the nervous system , peculiar to the Phos
phoric among the mineral acids, is probably due to the nature
of its base. From the same source may come its action on
the blood and on the bones . In low fevers, indeed, it is indi.
cated when the nervous system rather than the blood is
affected by the poison , and only in milder cases here, -stand
ing on the same level as Muriatic acid in their respective
spheres.* But it has more than once proved strikingly cura
tive in purpura and passive hæmorrhages. As regards the
bones, it is spoken highly of by German writers as a remedy
for caries, and Hartmann recommends it strongly in rachitis .
Its physical relation to osseous tissue is obviously an intimate
one ; and there is good reason to believe that such facts may
be used as suggestive of medicinal affinities.
In all these affections, the Phosphoric acid patient is charac
terised by tendency to passive flux from skin and mucous mem
brane. The medicine (which herein may be compared with
China and Iodine) often first displays its power by checking
these, as the perspiration of phthisis and thediarrhea of rachitic
or otherwise weakly children . It has even cured ague when
this condition, in the shape ofprofuse sweat, was the prominent
feature of the case.t I know not whether the ozæna, and the
thin and acrid leucorrhoea, in which Dr. Marcy has found it
curative, come under this head ; or the falling of the hair, as
from debility after fevers, in which I have often seen it
successful.
Phosphoric acid works side by side with Phosphorus
throughout its action . Besides this, it touches at some points
Fluoric acid and Silicea ; China ; Anacardium ; and the
mineral acids in general.
In nervous affections, in milky urine, in nutritive de
rangement, in fever, and in passive fluxes, Phosphoric acid
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xii, 23.
of Annals, i, 457.
50 ACIDUM SULPHURICUM .

seems to act well in the attenuations from the 3rd to the 12th .
But as a sexual tonic, in purpura , the phosphatic diathesis ,
diabetes, and caries, it does best in doses of several drops of
the 1st dec. dilution .
The last of my group is

Acidum sulphuricum .
“ Ten grains by weight of the officinal acid of the British
Pharmacopoeia, mixed with sufficient distilled water to measure
eighty minims, will constitute our 1x preparation ; " I quote
the British Homeopathic Pharmacopeia.
The only pathogenesis of Sulphuric acid we have is that
contained in the second edition of the Chronic Diseases.
It contains 513 symptoms from Hahnemann and five fellow
observers, and 8 from authors.
The first dilution of this acid is here directed to be made
with distilled water, and the subsequent ones with alcohol.
If we could suppose the former to have been used for the
proving, we might attach some importance to the symptoms
recorded ; but the epoch of their appearance compels us to
refer them to the category of those supposed to result from
globules of the 30th. Of the eight symptoms from authors
five are those of a typhoid from which the patients taking it
were suffering. The only valid ones are S. 148 ( " salivation " ),
151 ( “ aphthæ in the mouth ” ) and 198 (“hiccough ”—this
repeatedly recurred after the administration of clysters con
taining the acid ).
We thus know next to nothing about the dynamic physio
logical effects of Sulphuric acid ; and, judging from its
therapeutic position in homeopathic practice, these are
probably of more limited range than in the case of the other
acids. It has been mainly used in disorders of the alimen
tary canal. Hahnemann * speaks of " a very small dose of a
high dilution ” as curative of acidity of stomach. Dr. Bayes
* Organon, note on p. 10 of Dudgeon's translation.
 ACIDUM SULPHURICUM . 51

mentions a form of gastralgia in which he found it very

useful; and Dr. Schneider commends it in obstinate hic
cough, to which it is certainly homeopathic. Its undoubted
power, now so generally recognised, over diarrhea is also a
homoeopathic action ; for it is admitted by all therapeutists
that its continued use tends to loosen the bowels .* The
same may be said of its influence over cutaneous disorder ::
“ occasionally " writes Christison of acute poisoning by it
“ eruptions break out over the body.” Pereira says that
“ no remedy is so successful in relieving distressing itching,
tingling, and formication of the skin of lichen, prurigo, and
chronic urticaria, as Sulphuric acid taken internally .” Teste
has cured syphilitic macula with it.
But there are those who would have it that our use of
Sulphuric acid has been too limited hitherto. Among these
are Drs. Espanet and Cooper. The former thinks that it is
the antiphlogistic of cachectic subjects, as Aconite is that of
the robust. The lattert considers that Sulphuric, like Phos
phoric acid, shares. the virtues of its base, and is an anti
neuralgic and a possible anti- periodic. He gives a good case
of chronic gastralgia cured by it. The special relation of this
acid to cutaneous affections seems to support his position :
it was , indeed , on this ground that it was first used in them.I
The Sulphuric may be compared with the other mineral
acids. The 2nd and 3rd dec . have been its usual attenua
tions.
* Dr. Ringer moreover says, “ A small dose often benefits diarrhæa,
whilst a full one, by increasing the acidity of the canal, may even aggra
vate it.”
Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 699.
See Phys. and Med . Journal, iv, 484 .
 LECTURE IV .

ACONITE .-ACTÆA .

The survey we have now completed of the acids used in

our practice has exhibited the weakness as well as the strength
of Homeopathy as it at present exists. But in the medicine
we have now to study its strength alone is seen, and that at
its full. If Homeopathy had done nothing for therapeutics
but reveal the virtues of

Aconitum ,
it might even die content.
The Homeopathic tincture is prepared from the leaves
in addition to the root, and hence is not so strong as
Fleming's.
Hahnemann's proving of Aconite is contained in the first
volume of his Materia Medica Pura . It contains 541 symp
toms, of which 431 are from himself and seven fellow -observers,
and 110 from authors. The latter have been presented in
the fulness of their original sources, in French by Dr. Roth
( Révue critique et rétrospective de la Matire Médicale
Spécifique, i, 443), and in German by Dr. Gerstel (Oester
reichische Zeitschrift, i, 2) .
. I have given their results as
applied to the criticism of the symptoms in the seventeenth
volume of the Monthly Hom . Review (p. 697) . Aconite was,
moreover, one of the medicines selected for reproving by the
Austrian Provers' Society. Their work was carried out in
the most thorough manner, sixteen persons co -operating in it ;
the record of the experiments is contained in the first volume
of the Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für Homöopathie. These
 ACONITE . 53

two provings, with all additional matter available, are collated

by Dr. Dudgeon in the first part of the Hahnemann Materia
Medica. There are also (besides the well- known treatise of
Fleming * from the other school) monographs on Aconite by
Reil,+ Veith Meyer,I and Carroll Dunham . Hempel and the
New Materia Medica give numerous cases of poisoning ; and
all the systematic writers devote large space to the discussion
of the action of the drug.
It is impossible to begin to speak of Aconite without a
thrill of gratification and pride. The inestimable benefits
which are daily being obtained from this remedy, and which
are now attaining universal recognition , are the direct result
of Homeopathy. The experiments of Störck failed to elicit
its special virtues, and neither Lombard nor Fleming succeeded
in commending it to general appreciation. Its place in
Pereira's great work as a mere benumber of pain, and its.
rejection as dangerous and useless by Trousseau and Pidoux,
sufficiently characterise its reception in the old school twenty
years ago. But as early as 1811 Hahnemann had introduced
it to his disciples as the prince of antiphlogistics, the entire
supplanter of the then dominant lancet. The uses of the
drug thus suggested have ever since prevailed throughout the
Homeopathic body, as may be seen by the résumé of its
recorded successful applications given by Dr. Dudgeon at the
end of his article. Our brethren without seem to have caught,
almost periodically, a glimpse of its precious virtues ; and have
proclaimed them, generally (Liston being a noble exception )
with a sneer at their real discoverers, in the medical journals .
But, from want of knowledge how to use it, they have let it
go again ; and it is not until to -day that the persistent
teaching of Dr. Sydney Ringer (whose inspiration is not
An Enquiry into the Physiological and Medicinal Properties of the.
Aconitum Napellus, 1845.
+ Monograph on Aconite, trans. by Millard.
1 North Amer. Journ . of Hom .
& Amer. Hom . Review , vi.
54 ACONITE .

dubious) has brought it into general use. But this writer has
to say, first, indeed, that " perhaps no drug is more valuable
than Aconite,” but then , that “ its virtues are only beginning
to be appreciated ." * 66
“It is," as Dr. Ringer says, on account of its power to
control inflammation and subdue the accompanying fever that
Aconite is to be the most esteemed,” and it was from the study
of his collection of its pathogenetic effects that Hahnemann
inferred its possession of this power. What, then, are the
phenomena which belong to it in the sphere of the circulation
and temperature ?
A hasty glance at the symptoms of Aconite -poisoning has
led to its being set down as a mere cardiac depressant ; and
Dr. Ringer says that “ its influence over inflammation has
been ascribed by most observers to its power over the heart.”
But why, then, should it act so much more efficaciously than
Tobacco, Digitalis, Calabar bean, and other cardiac poisons,
which , indeed, have no such influence whatever ?+ A closer
look reveals that the condition set up is one answering to the
chill of fever and ague and the collapse of cholera. The pale
face, the quick and contracted pulse, the general coldness
within and without ; the signs (should death result) of extreme
venous congestion — these speak of a corresponding excitation
of the vaso -motor nerves throughout the body. Had the
thermometer been applied, it is probable that here as there
the temperature would have been found already on the rise .
That this is the true explanation of the symptoms appears
from what follows . For, should reaction take place, the
condition of febrile heat succeeds that of chill : as Dr. Wood
states, “ the circulation , respiration, and general temperature
* Handbook of Therapeutics, 4th ed ., 1874. Dr. Ringer's first memoir
on Aconite appeared in the Lancet for Jan. 9th , 1869, and closely
follows the article on it in this Manual, the first edition of which was
published in 1867.
Dr. Ringer has himself shown that another supposed rationale of the
anti-febrile power of Aconite is unfounded, viz. that it reduces the preter
natural heat by promoting perspiration (p. 431 ).
 ACONITE . 55

are somewhat increased.” The same statement is made and

illustrated by Fleming (pp. 34 , 148 ). This is well seen in
such a case as the tenth of Hempel's series. The pulse, at
first collapsed, became fuller, and rose to 100 ; the skin being
hot and dry and the tongue coated, with headache and sleep
lessness. But the power of Aconite to induce fever is still
more evident in the provings, and especially those of the
Austrian Society. * One of the latter experimenters was so
distressed by the febrile heat induced, that, not knowing what
drug he had been proving, he commenced taking Aconite to
obtain relief . The fever in these subjects was generally accom
panied by signs of arterial congestion of the head and chest.
If further confirmation of the pyreto -genetic power of Aconite
bad been needed , it would have been supplied by the experi.
ments of Professor Schroff.t Their main interest to us lies
in the evidence they supply of the influence of Aconite upon
the trigeminal nerve . But repeatedly in their record we meet
with expressions like these— “ much febrile movement, "
“ general internal and external heat, with quick pulse,"" " the
whole body was burning,”" ) “ alternately hot or cold .”” It is
curious that Dr. Horatio Wood, though he gives such a full
account of the physiological action of Aconite, and though he
shows by a reference that he is aware of these experiments of
Schroff's, entirely ignores them in his statements.
I maintain, then, that it is in virtue of its power of setting
up the essential phenomena of fever, of its action upon the
same parts and in a similar manner, that it controls this
condition when already present. This is all we require for
the demonstration of its homeopathicity, as this is all that
was required by Hahnemann to infer and apply the same.
It is not unreasonable to argue that the curative action is
really antipathic, as we use the primary action --the chill - of
the drug to counteract the secondary stage - the heat - of the
See Symptoms 777-782 in Dr. Dudgeon's arrangement.
+ Translated from the Journal für Pharmakodynamik in L'Union
Médicale for June and July, 1854.
 56 ACONITE .

disorder. But I think that, were it so, comparatively full doses

would be required for the effect ; whereas Aconite gained
per saltum the place which it now occupies in the hands of men
who never gave it except in infinitesimal quantities.
However this may be, it is certain that Aconite is the most
potent " antiphlogistic ” known to medicine. But, like every
other specifically acting drug, it has its proper sphere, beyond
which it is less useful. The sphere of Aconite may be defined
by two negations.
First, it has no influence upon the blood -corpuscles, and
so has little control over the fevers resulting from morbid
poisons. Its use in typhus and typhoid is mere waste of
precious time. In variola it will not lower the circulation
until the eruption comes out ; nor will it often touch
the high temperature of pyæmia .* It is more frequently
useful in measles and scarlatina, though in the latter only
when of a sthenic type, i.e. when the blood -poisoning is
but slight. I need hardly say that it will do nothing to
prevent the recurrence of the paroxysms of hectic or of the
malarial fevers.
Secondly, Aconite will do little for a fever which is sympto
matic of an acute local inflammation . The excellent cases of
pneumonia which Dr. Tessier has put on record t well illus
trate this : it is most interesting to notice how the pulse
defied Aconite, but went down rapidly when Bryonia or
Phosphorus touched the local mischief. There are, indeed,
a few inflammations in which Aconite may alone effect a
cure, as being a specific irritant of the part affected. These
are especially, as we shall see, the rheumatic inflammations.
But even in non - rheumatic pleurisy, in its plastic forms, and
also in some kinds of croup and angina tonsillaris, Aconite
is, as Hahnemann has said, a potent remedy. With these
exceptions,, it may be laid down that when true inflammatory
* See, however, Phillips, p. 13.
† Récherches cliniques sur le traitement de la Pneumonie et du Choléra
suivant la méthode de Hahnemann . Paris, 1850.
 ACONITE . 57

changes in a part have actually begun, it ceases to exert

remedial influence ; and a medicine homeopathic to the local
mischief must take its place. Dr. Ringer supplies another
contra -indication to the use of Aconite in inflammations, viz .
the absence of increased temperature, as shown by the ther-
mometer . When this obtains - as in some forms of angina
the remedy will be ineffectual. *
These negatives suggest the positive we desiäerate. The
fever in which Aconite is specific is the " synocha " of the
old authors, the “ pure inflammatory fever ” indicated by
Hahnemann, the fever in which the fibrin of the blood is in
excess ( so that its clot would be buffed and cupped ), while
the corpuscles are un poisoned and the tissues as yet intact..
Let the morbid impression known as a “ chill ” be made
upon the vascular nerves ; let the arterioles under their influe
ence first contract to produce the cold stage, and then dilate
for the hot stage of simple fever ; and we have the everyday
occurrence for which Aconite is the unfailing remedy.
Whether the chill or the heat be present, the medicine is no
less indicated ; and let the storm of arterial excitement be ever
so high, a few doses will quiet its fury. “ In as short a timeas
four hours after the administration of Aconite in the morbid .
states in question, all danger to life is past, and the excited
circulation returns from hour to hour to its more tranquil
course. ” So truly wrote Hahnemann in 1811) in pointing
out to us this most important use of our medicine. Indeed ,
it may be laid down, that unless a fever ( not being rheu-
7

matie, of which more anon ) has greatly abated within twenty

four hours of commencing Aconite, it is one for which the
remedy is unsuited.
This relation of Aconite to inflammation and inflammatory
fever is well stated by Teste ; and still more fully by Dr..
Carroll Dunham in the article of his on Aconite to which I
have referred . He (the latter) well points out its accord..
Dr. Imbert Gourbeyre, in pre-thermometric days, had shown the samo.
thing symptomatically ( Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xiv).
58 ACONITE .

ance with the symptomatic indications given for the drug

by Hahnemann himself, viz. : when “ in conjunction with
thirst and a rapid pulse there are present an anxious
impatience, a restlessness not to be quieted, distress, and an
agonised tossing about.” These are the symptoms of inflam
matory fever before it has well localised itself, as seen in the
primary pyrexia of pneumonia, beginning with its well
marked chill. When exudation has set in at the affected part,
the tension of the circulation and nervous system diminishes ;
and such fever as continues is sympathetic and of like
character with the local changes. He illustrates the pheno
mena by the passing of a tempest over a village, which may
subside to perfect calm ; but which may leave behind it a
cottage on fire, that shall be in its turn the centre of agita
tion and mischief. Aconite will subdue the storm ; but it
will not put out the conflagration . The same symptomatic
indications admirably harmonize with the relation of our drug
to the essential fevers. The condition of the patient in typhoid
and other toxæmic pyrexiæ is one of heaviness and oppression,
rather than of the anxietas characteristic of Aconite .
It is right to add that all these observers - Hahnemann
himself, Tessier, Teste, Dunham , (and I may add Dr.
Guernsey in the same strain )-speak of the action of the
higher dilutions of the medicine, which alone they were
accustomed to employ. Those who have used stronger pre
parations seem inclined to give it a wider range . “ The
power of this drug over inflammation" writes Dr. Ringer
“ is little less than marvellous ; " and Hempel seems to know
no limit to its action here. Dr. Bayes speaks highly of it, in
the 1st dec. dilution, in acute otitis, to which it has no
proved homeopathic relation. Wurmb, who gave it high ,
allows it no place in typhus; but Trinks, who used the lowest
dilutions, thinks it of real service in the incipience of the less
asthenic forms. It is here as elsewhere. Infinitesimals ,
at least in the higher grades, act only when the homeopa
thicity is perfect ; though here they display such brilliant
 ACONITE . 59

powers that one may well become enamoured of them . A

nearer approach to the crude drug widens the range of action ,
and enables us to be content with a simile instead of searching
for an often unattainable and still more often illusory similli
mum . But whether the cure-work under these circumstances
is less perfectly performed is a question as yet unsettled.
The condition, then, to which Aconite is homeopathic, and
which makes it our great febrifuge, is one of tension of the
nervous and arterial systems, manifesting itself by restless
anxiety in the one, and chill and heat, with thirst, in the
other. It is easy to see that a large class of acute affections
beyond those hitherto specified may thus come within its
range. In active hæmorrhage, especially hæmoptysis ; in
acute congestion of almost any part ; and in recent febrile
dropsy, Aconite will always commence and often complete
a cure . The same thing may be said of acute sthenic erysi
pelas and puerperal fever, and of the “ urethral fever ” which
in some subjects follows the passing a catheter. In cholera
infantum Dr. Madden found it indispensable in Australia ;**
and Dr. Guernsey writes of it— " if a child is suffering from
a watery diarrhea, is crying and complaining very much,
biting his fists, and is sleepless, Aconite will usually settle
this trouble in a short time." In the collapse of Asiatic
cholera itself, where the chill is so deadly that were it not for
the consecutive fever its true nature would be hardly recog
nisable, but where (as in ague) the temperature is already
rising, Aconite will assert its power. It is due to Dr.
Hempel to say that from early times he has maintained the
homoeopathicity and potency of the medicine here. In the
epidemic of 1866, a French physician (Dr. Cramoisy ) reports
twelve severe cases recovering under this remedy alone, given
in drop doses of the mother tincture.f It is especially when
collapse comes on very rapidly, with little or no premonitory
illness, and unattended by copious evacuations, that Aconite
* Annals, v , 37.
+ Bull. de la Soc . Méd . de France, 1865, pp. 604 and 652 .
60 ACONITE .

is indicated. Arsenic is the medicine generally prescribed in

such cases; but its sphere and that of Aconite intersect and over
lap each other at this point, and the greater rapidity of the
action of the latter would seem to turn the scale in its favour.
The power of rectifying the disordered balance of the cir
culation shown in these instances gives Aconite an important
place in the treatment of many morbid conditions not strictly
febrile. In apoplexy and in puerperal convulsions, where
there is much arterial excitement, Aconite will do every
thing for which the lancet used to be thought indispensable.
In suppression of the menses from a chill or a fright, with its
accompanying congestive phenomena, there is no more valu .
able medicine. Again, where the tension is in the nervous
system alone, Aconite (especially in the higher dilutions) is
of signal service. Dr. Bayes speaks well of it in the
insomnia of aged persons and of remittent fevers; and Hab
nemann writes— “ It produces all the morbid states which are
manifested in persons whose minds have been excited by fear,
joined with indignation ; and it is also the surest means of
curing them rapidly .”” Fear of death , when urgently present ,
has been found an unerring indication for it.
This leads me to say a few words upon the action of Aconite
in the musculo -motor sphere of the nervous system . We
find here a similar tension induced to that already seen in
the vaso -motor division . Not paralysis, but spasm , is ex
cited, and that nearly always of a tonic character. Trismus
is a common symptom in cases of poisoning ; the sufferers.
frequently complain of constriction at the throat, of local
cramps and spasms, and of stiffness and difficulty of moving
the limbs ; and there are several cases on record in which
complete opisthotonos existed, and the pseudo -tetanic state
was induced as completely as by Strychnia.
Correspondingly, Aconite has considerable power over some
spasmodic affections. Its usefulness - generally in alterna .
tion with other more locally acting medicines — in the incipi.
ence of the neuro -phlogoses we call croup and whooping -cough
 ACONITE . 61

is probably to some extent of this kind . In the asthmatic

paroxysm , and in that of laryngismus stridulus, when excited
by cold dry air, it will often give relief. In simple trismus
and many other local cramps and spasms, especially when
owning a similar origin, it should always be thought of ;
Teste relates a striking case of the kind in which the pecto
ralis muscle was at fault, and simulated cardiac disease. But,
above all, it bids fair to be a valuable medicine in tetanus.
There are seven cases of the traumatic form of the disease
now on record, in which Aconite, in ordinary doses, was the
main remedy used ; and in six recovery was the result. It
would be still more suitable to the idiopathic form of the dis
ease, from exposure to cold and wet ; and to the “ tetany
described by Trousseau . The numbness and tingling with
which the spasms of the latter begin, their probable rheumatic
origin, the occasional presence of febrile symptoms, and the
benefit observed from blood -letting — all point to Aconite .
It is not easy to say whether the action of Aconite in the
sensory is of a piece with that which it exerts in the motor
sphere of the nervous system . It certainly causes, not hyper-,
but anæsthesia. Yet this is characteristically accompanied by
prickling and tingling, which at one point developes into
“ first tension and then lancinating pain .” These are the
words of Professor Schroff ; and the nerve for which Aconite
in his experiments displayed an elective affinity is the trige
minal. Dr. Imbert Gourbeyre has studied this action of
Aconite, * and claimed its anti-neuralgic properties — which
are decided, but hitherto deemed a mere local benumbing
for homeopathy accordingly.
We pass now to another great sphere of the action of
Aconite,-its anti-rheumatic virtues. It cannot be said that
these also were proclaimed by Hahnemann, or are discoveries
of the law of similars. The names of Störck , + Lombard ,I and
• Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xiv, 169.
+ Exp. et Obs. circa usum internum Stram ., Hyosc ., et Aconiti. 1762.
Gazette Médicale de Paris, 1835.
62 ACONITE .

Fleming are most prominent as advocates of Aconite in this

connection . The first found it curative in many old rheuma
tisms, improvement generally setting in with critical sweats
or eruptions. The second ascribed to it a specific action
against acute articular rheumatism . And the third says of
its use in the same affection that the average time required
for cure is from five to six days ; that the drug seems to pro
tect the patient from cardiac complications; (that the conva
lescence is very short ; and that much less stiffness of the
joints is left than under the ordinary treatment .
Nevertheless, though otherwise arrived at, the anti-rheu
matic virtues of Aconite are truly homeopathic. Pains in
the joints, muscles, and fibrous tissues generally, of a cutting,
tearing, and shooting character, are very frequent in the
provers ; and they are attested by Ringer and Schroff .
Schneller, in the experiments of the Vienna Proving Society ,
developed genuine muscular rheumatism in his own back and
loins.* One of the Austrian provers had , alternating with
his articular sufferings, painful palpitation of the heart and
præcordial anxiety ; and Dr. Jousset says that he has intro
duced into the circulation of rabbits increasing doses of the
extract, with the invariable result of producing lesions of the
mitral valve. Very painful hyperemia of the eyes has been
more than once observed,† and looks like sclerotitis. Lastly,
in post -mortem examinations decided evidences of inflamma
tion of the pleura and peritoneum have been found ; and the
symptoms elicited by some of the provers are in full harmony
therewith .
All this is in closest analogy with the action of the rheu
matic poison ; and, in the hands of those who avail themselves
of the lower potencies, Aconite is reckoned the prime homæo
pathic remedy for acute rheumatism . In higher attenuations
it seems to have less power, and is thus little favoured by
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vi, 271 .
+ See Case 7 in the New Materia Medica, and Cases XV and XVI in
the Appendix to Fleming's Monograph.
 ACONITE . 63

Wurmb; there is indeed none of the nervous tension here

which seems indispensable if it is to act well in infinitesimal
doses. But there is fever, with which is increase of the fibrin
ofthe blood ; it is (ordinarily ) of synochal type, and would by
itself demand the remedy. It is as yet unknown whether
Aconite can subdue the dangerous hyper -pyrexia sometimes
observed in this disease . But I should think it likely to
impede its supervention by moderating the ordinary rise of
temperature, which it unquestionably does. The rheumatic
being a toxæmic fever, and not departing in its characteristic
perspiration, cannot be expected to disappear under the
the Aconite in a few hours ; but it will yield in good time.
It is obvious, moreover, that the supervention of any of the
common complications of acute rheumatism would not render
this medicine less truly indicated ; for we have seen it acting
similarly on the heart and the serous membranes. It may,
however, be sometimes aided by medicines acting more power
fully upon the tissues affected, as Bryonia in pleurisy, Colchi
cum in pericarditis, Spigelia in endocarditis.
In acute local rheumatisms, moreover , Aconite is often most
effectual, as in stiff -neck' or prosopalgia resulting from a
draught, in lumbago, in rheumatic ophthalmia, and in sciatica
where the sheath of the nerve is affected . Homeopathy bas
hardly put it to the proof in those chronic rheumatic con
ditions for which Störck and his followers have so lauded it ;
and what are the nature and conditions of its action here
remains to be seen .
I have only yet to speak of the action of Aconite on the
heart. It has hitherto been generally assumed that it de
presses and ultimately paralyses this organ . But such con
clusions have been arrived at from cases of poisoning, and
from experiments on animals with large quantities. Schroen ,
Arnold, and Sharp * in the homeopathic school concur to
testify , that in small doses it quickens the cardiac action in

Dudgeon, p. 27, note . Monthly Hom . Rev., xvii, 603.

.64 ACOVITE.

man1 ;; and Rudolph Boehm has lately obtained similar results

from fractions of a milligramme of Aconitine in frogs. * The
-acceleration cannot be, he says, from removal of inhibition
through paralysis of the vagi ; as Atropine, which effects
this, leaves the number of beats unaltered in the frog . It
can only be, therefore, from excitation of the motor nervous
supply of the heart. This is further confirmed by the second
stage of the phenomena resulting from these minute quanti
ties. Spasms of the heart set in, and these “ far more decided
and outspoken than with larger doses.” The ultimate stage
is, indeed , diastolic absence of motion! ; but this, he says, is
clearly a cessation from weariness, -the heart showing all the
characters of an organ semi- paralysed and tired out by excess
of activity and irritation. He calls attention, moreover , to
the remarkable consonance between the action of higher degrees
of heat (as observed by Cyon ) and that of Aconitine upon the
heart. The “ palpitation " so constantly noted by the provers
of Aconite points in the same direction .
Aconite is thus perfectly homeopathic to the condition of
the heart which obtains in the sthenic fevers ; but it also has
an important place in primary disorder of that organ . Of its
value in the cardiac inflammations of acute rheumatism I
have already spoken. It is very useful in all diseases of the
heart characterised by increased action , especially where the
left side is chiefly involved . Its continued use gives much
relief to the distress of hypertrophy. In one case of the rare
spasm of the heart I saw almost instantaneous relief follow
its administration ; and in palpitation, where the heart retains
its vigour, it is the best soother.
The therapeutic powers of Aconite have now been passed
in review. The conclusion is that — beyond many minor
applications — it is the precious remedy which fills that im
portant place so long occupied by venésection. It was Aconite
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi, 194. The full account of these experi
ments gives a very different impression from that conveyed by Dr. H. C.
Wood's résumé of them .
 ACONITE . 65

which , in days when the lancet was in universal use, enabled

Hahnemann and his disciples to dispense with it ; and it is
Aconite only which will prevent its revivification now . Five
years ago I should have said that this was far from impro
bable. Wilks and Ringer had merely repeated what Fleming
and Routh in their time had proclaimed ; and with these as
with those it seemed likely that, from want of knowledge how
to use the remedy, they would let it go again. But a deeper
and wider impression seems now to have been made ; and it
may be trusted that throughout the profession the conviction
is growing that in Aconite we possess a remedy which has all
the energy without the inconveniences of bleeding, so that by
it the place of the lancet is irrevocably taken .
As regards allied medicines, it seems to me that Aconite is
perfectly unique as to its action in the sphere of the circula
tion . The influence of Arsenic, Quinine, and Veratrum
album over the vaso -motor nerves presents points of contrast
rather than of comparison : and the action of Aconite is quite
different from that of the so -called “ arterial sedatives," which
in large doses knock down fever by prostrating the heart's
energy . In the musculo -motor sphere, Aconite may be com
pared with Cicuta and Hydrocyanic acid . Its relation to
rheumatism classes it with Bryonia , Colchicum , Actoa race
mosa , and Spigelia : and in its influence upon the heart it
resembles somewhat Cactus grandiflorus, Naja , and once again
Spigelia.
And now as to dose. I cannot deny that Hahnemann's
immediate successors seem to have found success from the
plan recommended (more or less theoretically ) by him , of
administering in fever a single dose of a high dilution of
Aconite (18th to 30th) , and allowing it to act. But it is no
less certain that the homeopathic practice of the present day
in all countries is to give frequently repeated doses of a low
dilution until the fever departs in perspiration . I have myself
never adopted any other practice thar this : so that I have no
other to recommend to you. The dilutions I use are the 1st,
5
66 ACTÆA RACEMOSA .

3rd, and 6th of the decimal scale. The first in high fever, in
acute rheumatism and rheumatic or other inflammations, in
cholera , croup, cardiac spasm or angina, and tetanus. The
3rd in less violent febrile conditions, in whooping -cough and
asthma ; and when the symptoms requiring the drug occur in
young children . The 6th in the febrile chill, in sub -acute
circulatory disturbance connected with menstruation , in
chronic heart disease, and generally where the medicine has
to be taken continuously for some time. I have also, like Dr.
Bayes, used with advantage in nervous excitement the 12th
and even the 30th ; and Dr. Hempel has shown that in such
dilutions it should be used even as an antiphlogistic when the
patient's strength has been much reduced by depleting
measures .

I shall occupy the time remaining to us to-day with some

remarks on the
Actæa racemosa.
By this its Linnæan name I venture still to designate the
plant; though it is now more commonly called — less beautifully
and with no pleasing suggestiveness - Cimicifuga. 7
A tincture is made from the ot. The “ concentrated "
preparation Cimicifugin, or Macrotin, seems to contain most,
if not all, of the virtues of the plant ; it is triturated or dissolved
in alcohol.
Actæa has been fairly proved, altogether by nine persons.
The original experiments may be found in the third volume of
the North American Journal of Homeopathy, and in Dr.
Hempel's Materia Medica. Those from the former source,
with all other knowledge regarding the drug, have been
gathered together by Dr. Hale in the article on the drug in
his New Remedies.
Drs. Phillips and Horatio Wood concur in saying that we
have little or no knowledge of the physiological action of
Actea. This is an ignoring of the labours of homeopathists,
 ACTÆA RACEMOSA . 67

as such , which is hardly creditable to either, and which

ignorance cannot palliate in the former, as he refers to Dr.
Hale's book. Perhaps it would not be welcome to either to
admit that restlessness is so markedly caused by it ; for it
was first introduced into ordinary practice as a remedy for
chorea, and upon the prevailing theory of medicinal action it
ought to exercise a sedative rather than a disturbing influence
upon the nervous centres. There is, however, abundant
evidence from provings and overdosings to show that the latter
is its real action. Agitation and pain are the signs of its
influence everywhere. The head aches severely, with especial
involvement of the eyeballs; the mind is irritable and distressed,
and even a condition resembling delirium tremens has been
induced . There is great bodily restlessness, which is next
door to jactitation, with pains in the spine, the muscles (in
cluding the heart), and the joints. One prover had sharp
pleurodynia more than once during his experiments.
Now , if the principle of homeopathy be sound, Actæa ought
to prove a remedy for some forms of rheumatism, and espe
cially when the nervous centres and the muscles are the seat of
the disorder. On the other hand, since it causes no febrile
symptoms, it cannot vie with Aconite in rheumatic fever.
Well, this is just what experience has established . In the
acute and local muscular rheumatisms, as pleurodynia,
lumbago, and torticollis, Actæa has gained universal com
mendation . The only exception is Dr. Ringer; but he extols
it highly in some of the sub - acute articular forms of the dis
He specifies rheumatoid arthritis, especially when of
uterine origin , and when the pains are worse at night and in
wet or windy weather, It relieves these, and the cramps
which often accompany them , to a very considerable extent.
Another form simulates gonorrheal rheumatism , but without
any history of gonorrhoea. Here not only may the pains be
almost immediately relieved , but the joints may become
supple and useful again . This by the way ; but I am per
suaded that it is in muscular rheumatisms that Actæa will best
68 ACTÆA RACEMOSA .

sustain its reputation . Among these must be included the

sufferings which the heart and the uterus often undergo from
the influence of the rheumatic poison. The provings recorded
by Dr. Hempel - the experimenterwas a pupil of his - make it
evident that Actæa affects the heart very powerfully. When
rheumatism attacks this organ, not setting up inflammation ,,
but as it does other muscles, we have aa valuable remedy in our
present drug. In a case of the kind cured by Dr. Hale the
symptoms resembled angina pectoris, the attacks of pain
recurring several times a day. Last, it is here ( I think ) that
we must place the undoubted power of Actæa over chorea.
The frequency of the rheumatic origin of this disorder is
well known ; and Dr. Ringer actually states that it is only
when chorea has this origin that he finds the medicine
curative.
He might, however, have extended its efficacy to cases
having the uterus for their starting -point. Actæa has an
undoubted action upon this organ ; though in the absence of
female provers we can say only that it is abortifacient and
ecbolic, producing miscarriage without the inflammatory irrita
tion of Sabina, and exciting in labour less unremitting con
tractions than Secale . But its therapeutic virtues in this
region are numerous and well established. It is especially
when the uterus is presumedly rheumatic that it influences it
for good, relieving dysmenorrhea and after - pains, checking
the tendency to abortion, and facilitating parturition. When
the “ irritable uterus” is traceable to this origin, Actæa helps
it greatly. But beyond this, when morbid uterine conditions
show themselves elsewhere than in the organ itself by the
pains and agitations characteristic of the drug, it comes
potently to their relief. It cures uterine epilepsy and hysteria ;
puerperal melancholia (the case published by the late Sir
James Simpson is a brilliant instance ); the nervousness of
pregnancy ; and the restless and unhappy state of mind so
often seen in uterine patients.* It dissipates the infra-mam
* See cases in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 168 , 662 ; xxvüi, 159, 248.
 ACTÆA RACEMOSA . 69

mary pain in unmarried females, which the authority just

named tells us is to the uterus what pain in the shoulder is to
the liver ; and also pains in the mammæ themselves so
arising. It is above all useful in the sufferings of the
climacteric age , relieving the sinking at the stomach (which is
one of its marked pathogenetic symptoms), the pain at the
vertex, and the irritability of disposition better than any other
medicine.
While connecting the influence of Actæa on muscular tissue
with that of the rheumatic poison, I have no idea of limiting its
remedial power to rheumatic myoses . It has removed simple
myalgia when not traceable (as with Arnica ) to fatigue. Of
this Dr. Madden has recorded some instances ; and one of very
striking character in which the diaphragm was the seat of the
affection , and where he was not only physician but patient.
The malady had lasted nine years ; and the narrative of its
diagnosis and cure is one of the most interesting things in
medical literature. It is to be read in the twenty - fifth volume
of the British Journal of Homoeopathy (p. 493 ).
The same remark applies to the nervous centres. It may
be only rheumatic chorea in which Actæa is curative, but there
are certainly other nervous affections in which no such origin
can be traced, and in which nevertheless the medicine acts
perfectly well. We have seen this in the uterine neuroses ;
but it holds good no less elsewhere. Thus Dr. Hale has seen
it usefulness in the sleeplessness of children, from deutition or
otherwise, and Dr. Phillips in the hypochondriasis of sperma
torrhea ; it has also more than once removed the spasms of
cerebro -spinal meningitis.
The power of Actæa over pulmonary affections is as yet
doubtful ; though it has some reputation in those of “ rheu
matic " origin and character.
Last, as to the eyes. I have mentioned before the
severe pain in the forehead and eyeballs caused by the drug ;
this is, indeed, the characteristic symptom of Actæism . Dr.
Angell has been led to use it largely, in the form of Macro
70 ACTÆA RACEMOSA .

tin , in eye-affections. He commends it in " accommodative,

retinal, and muscular asthenopia ; in photophobia from
asthenopia ; and in hyperæmia of the conjunctiva, iris, choroid ,
and retina, due to prolonged exertion of myopic or hyperme
tropic eyes.”
Actæa may be compared with Caulophyllum and Secale
in its uterine relations ; and with Aconite in its influence over
rheumatic disorders. Its effects on the nervous system some
what resemble those of the last medicine and of Arsenicum ,
but they are sui generis.
It is used in homeopathic practice mainly in the dilutions
from the first decimal to the third centesimal.
 LECTURE V.

ASCULUS, ÆTHUSA, AGARICUS, AGNUS CASTUS, AILANTHUS,

ALLIUM CEPA AND SATIVUM, ALOES .

We will begin to -day's lecture with the

Æsculus hippocastanum .
This medicine --- the horse -chestnut - is known only in
homeopathic practice. A tincture is prepared from the nut,
and is certainly efficacious. Pharmaceutically, however, it
would seem better to make triturations ; which indeed were
mainly used in the provings.
Æsculus was first proved - on seven persons — by Dr.
Buchmann ; an account of his experiments is translated from
the Vierteljahrschrift in the eighteenth volume of the British
Journal of Homeopathy. In Dr. Hale’s New Remedies six more
provings are detailed , and the many reports of its clinical use
which have appeared in Homeopathic journals are brought
together.
The region most constantly and strongly affected by Æsculus
is that of the rectum and anus. No prover escaped its in .
fluence here ; and, beyond the many forms of distress experi
enced by others, in one not previously subject to hæmorrhoids
these morbid growths were produced. Correspondingly,
Æsculus has acquired a high reputation in the homeopathic
school as an anti-hæmorrhoidal medicine. I have several
times affirmed and illustrated its value ;* and Dr. Hale cites
numerous testimonies of like import. The form of the disease
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 249, 485 ; xxv, 428. Manual of Thera
peutics, P. 280 .
 72 ÆSCULUS HIPPOCASTANUM.

in which it seems specially efficient is that in which the only

connected symptom or appreciable cause is constipation , and
where there is much pain but little bleeding. It may be used
with advantage in other rectal troubles, where congestion and
pain are present ; herein resembling Aloes and Collinsonia .
Aching in the lumbo-sacral region is very marked in the
provers of Æsculus, and is a well-known concomitant of
hæmorrhoids. Dr. Guernsey attaches great importance to
this pain as a “ key-note” for the remedy. He considers it
situated in the sacro -iliac symphysis. “ The pain ” he writes
“in this region is not severe, more a sensation of painful weak
ness, and is brought on by exercise and relieved by rest. When
attempting to walk about or attend to usual occupations the
back gives out,' and the patient is obliged to rest.” When
this symptom occurs in connection with disorder of the rectum
or the sexual organs, we are (he says) to think of Æsculus.
When first writing about Æsculus I called attention to its
action on the throat, where it has caused a dark -red congestion
of the fauces, with dryness and soreness, similar to that which
is set up in the rectum . I mentioned then a case in which it
had removed such a condition when occurring idiopathically ;
and Dr. Meyhoffer has since put another on record , in which
constipation and hæmorrhoids co -existed, and all yielded to
the remedy. * He writes also in his valuable treatise On
Chronic Diseases of the Organs of Respiration (vol. i, p. 373)
6 From Æsculus hippocastanum we have often derived
great satisfaction when bronchial frritation was influenced by
a gouty diathesis or abdominal congestion, accompanied by
dilatation and inflammation of the hæmorrhoidal veins and
constipation . "
In the American Observer for April, 1874, Dr. Hart, of
Wyoming, has some interesting remarks on Æsculus. He
extends its sphere to all active abdominal and pelvic conges
tions, especially when characterised by a sense of throbbing ;
and speaks warmly of its value herein.
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 549.
 ÆTHUSA CYNAPIUM . 73

Æsculus seems to act the better for dilution to some extent.

The second and third potencies have been those I have used ,
and Dr. Hart gets his results with the sixth.
I have next to speak of the
Æthusa cynapium .
This is the “ garden hemlock," the “ fools' parsley " of
popular nomenclature. The tincture is prepared from the
whole fresh plant for homeopathic practice, in which alone it
is used .
A pathogenesis of Æthusa was published by Hartlaub and
Trinks in the fourth volume of their Annalen (1833) . An
analysis of this , with the sources of the cited symptoms in full,
is given by Dr. Roth in the second volume of the Révue de la
Matière Médicale Specifique. In 1847 Dr. Petroz published
another pathogenesis, consisting of symptoms observed by
himself .* Dr. Roth has combined the two collections, with
revision and additions, in his Materia Medica (I. 169 ). His
article is translated by Metcalf. The cases of poisoning on
record are pretty fully given by Hempel.
The result of Dr. Roth's examination of the pathogenesis
of Hartlaub and Trinks is to leave it much discreditedl ; as
nearly all the symptoms were supplied by Nenning, whose
contributions to the Materia Medica are of very dubious
value. But Dr. John Harley would leave us still more desti
tute. In an article in the fourth volume of the St. Thomas's
Hospital Reports he examines the recorded cases of poisoning
by Æthusa , and records eighteen experiments of his own ;
coming to the conclusion that toxicologists have hitherto been
under aa delusion , and that the fools ' parsley is a harmless
plant. I confess that although his experiments have much
negative force, I do not feel satisfied with the principles
on which he determines the validity of the poisoning
* See bis Études de la Thérapeutique, & c., Ed. Cretin, Paris, 1864 ;
also Teste's Materia Medica .
74 ÆTHUSA CYNAPIUM .

cases, and must think the question still sub judice. However
it be determined, the therapeutic virtues of the drug may yet
be believed ; and you must allow me for the present to connect
them with its physiological effects as hitherto accepted.
Æthusa is a poison of no mean intensity. One of the nar
cotico -acrids of toxicology, its irritant influence is manifested
not so much by inflammation as by pain, which is generally
very severe . The nervous symptoms are convulsive, somewhat
epileptiform in character ; in one case (in a child) it is noted
that the thumbs were bent inwards, and the eyes turned down
wards. The lower jaw is tetanically fixed . In less severe cases
there is much complaint of headache ; the face is usually red ,
and in one instance the eyes were painfully inflamed aud the
cheeks cedematous. As regards the provings, I have spoken
of those of Hartlaub and Trinks. No information is given as
to the manner in which Petroz' observations were made ; nor
is there anything very specific about them, except pain and
swelling in the axillary and other glands. Æthusa has been
little used in practice. From Petroz' experience it would
seem most useful in sub -acute inflammations of the ocular and
palpebral conjunctiva, associated with swelling of the glands
and cutaneous eruptions, —in a word, in mild cases of strumous
ophthalmia. Dr. Roth also reports a cure of this malady.
The action of Æthusa on the eyes deserves further investiga
tion. Kallenbach speaks very highly of its value in intoler
ance of milk in children . * I agree with Mr. Cliftont that the
inference as to this from the pathogenetic symptoms is a
misunderstanding ; but it may be a true action nevertheless.
Dr. Guernsey entirely confirms it, and esteems Æthusa highly
in cholera infantum . He says that “ this remedy is one of the
most important in the Materia Medica , and is not so well
known as it should be.” He gives, as indications for it, great
anguish and crying ; disposition to jump out of bed or escape
from the room ; great anxiety expressed by the face, often
* Gazette Homæopathique de Paris, 1850, No. IX.
+ Monthly Hom . Review , xii, 399.
 AGARICUS MUSCARIUS . 75

accompanied with the linea nasalis ; regurgitation of food

an hour after it has been taken ; swelling of external glands
with lancinating pains ; startings preventing sleep ; heat
without thirst. It should be of service in the convulsive
affections of childhood : Mr. Clifton reports it useful in these,
when gastro - enteric irritation is present.
Æthusa is comparable with Cicuta virosa and Enanthe
crocata in its toxicological effects ; with Cistus, Bovista,
Clematis, and Sulphur in its finer actions and curative powers .
The 6th dilution seems to have been that mainly used.
And now, of
Agaricus muscarius.
This is the mushroom popularly known as fly or bug
agaric ; it is the fausse orange of the French , the amanita of
the Italians. For homeopathic practice in which alone it is
now used) a tincture is made of the fresh, or triturations of
the dried fungus .
The pathogenesis of Agaricus appears first in the second
edition of Hahnemann's treatise on Chronic Diseases. He
acknowledges ten fellow -observers ; and the 715 symptoms
recorded belong almost exclusively to these. They may,
therefore, be largely the result of experiments on the healthy,
hough always (it is to be feared ) with the higher infinitesi.
mals. * There are but 21 symptoms from authors ; so that
little use has been made of observations of poisoning by the
fungus. In the Vierteljahrschrift, x, 3 (transl. in Brit. Journ.
of Hom ., xviii, 268) Dr. Roth has analysed the pathogenesis
with condemnatory results, and has given a schema of what
be considers the genuine effects of the drug. Since then, it
has been re-proved by the Austrian Society in their usual
exhaustive manner, under the auspices of Prof. Zlatarowich.
• Dr. Roth shows that five of the symptoms were supposed to have
resulted from holding a solution of Agaricus 9 or 30 in a full glass before
the opened right eye of a patient.
76 AGARICUS MUSCARIUS .

Their results have been published in the Oesterreichische

Zeitschrift. An account of these experiments is given by
Hempel; and in Allen's Encyclopædia the symptomsobtained
are incorporated with Hahnemann's and those of poisonings
(the last fully given by Marcy and Peters ), making a grand
total of 2495 .
Agaricus appears, from the poisonings and Austrian
provings (which alone I feel able to use as materials), to exert
its chief influence upon the nervous centres. Upon the brain
it acts as an intoxicating agent, like Alcohol, Opium, and
Haschisch : it is used for the purpose by the Kamschatkans.
The drunkenness is more vertiginous at the outset, and more
delirious afterwards than that induced by Alcohol : it is often
accompanied by increased muscular force. The disordered
exaggeration of function ending in suspension, which intoxi .
cation implies in the cerebral centres, is also manifested in the
other divisions of the nervous system . Neuralgic pains are
experienced as though sharp ice touched the parts, or cold
needles ran through the nerves — in this contrasted with the
Arsenic neuralgia, in which the imaginary needles are red
hot :: or again, the sensory nerves lose their elasticity and
power of resistance, so that when even feeble pressure is
applied to a spot, it pains a long while after. But the motor
centres suffer most severely. Tremors and quite choreiform
twitchings are produced by it ; convulsions of epileptiform
type are not uncommon in poisonings ; and in several of the
provers were developed symptoms of a profound affection of
the spinal cord . Here are the symptoms obtained by Surgeon
Baumgärtner. While taking some of the lower decimal
attenuations he had pain between the eighth and ninth dorsal
vertebræ , heaviness and languor in the lower extremities, and a
.sensation of coldness in the glutei muscles. Under large
doses of the mother tincture the latter symptoms increased ,
the gait became unsteady, and formication was felt in the
feet. The pain was then felt also in the region of the first
and second lumbar vertebræ , and in the sacrum . Next followed
 AGARICUS MUSCARIUS . 77

paralytic weakness of the sphincter ani and involuntary

dribbling of the urine. Three hundred drops caused , among
other symptoms, “ lassitude and trembling of the lower
extremities ; coldness and insensibility of the glutei muscles ;
continual twitching in the small of the back and the lower
extremities ; sensation as if a cool current of air were passing
from the spine over the whole body.” The prover experienced
a fulness and a sensation of weight, with pressure, in the
small of the back , a creaking in the fingers and toes when
moving them , with stinging pains in the same, and in the
integuments generally. Another prover, after taking ten
drops of the mother tincture, was suddenly attacked with a
violent stitch in the small of the back , attended with vertigo
and nausea, so that he had to vomit ; the pain gradually
extending along the whole spine, as far as the medulla
oblongata. On touching the vertebral column, it was painful
in several places. Prof. Zlatarovich himself had " crawling
and pricking sensation in the nerves, a feeling of painful
tension in the fascia of the thigh, painfulness of the spinal
column, drawing and tensive pain in the spinal cord, and occa
sional fugitive pains in the track of the spinal nerves.”
There are many other characteristic symptoms induced by
Agaricus, which as yet defy classification . Thus the mucous
membranes are found coated with a yellow mucus ; on the
skin a lichenous eruption (lichen pilaris urticatus) has been
developed , with crawling, stinging, and burning ; the liver
is seen in autopsies greatly enlarged ; pains, as though
innumerable splinters were in them, are felt in the muscles,
especially in the deltoid , where a small abscess even developed
itself. The testicles were much retracted in several provers ;
and the urine often had a whitish sediment, wbich one tested
and found to be Phosphate of Magnesia.
The use of Agaricus has been hardly commensurate with its
physiological importance. It is quite disused in ordinary
practice, though formerly reputed in epilepsy, to which it is.
homeopathic enough. In our practice it has often cured
78 AGARICUS MUSCARIUS .

chorea, to the idiopathic form of which it is a precise simile : it

is said to be especially indicated when the twitchings cease
during sleep. Dr. Roth, from his study of its toxicological
effects, recommended it in ataxic typhus ; and Dr. Drysdale
has recorded two cases of this form of the fever in which it
proved effective in his hands.* Some of its spinal symptoms
point to congestion of the cord ; but most of them , I think,
belong to that ill-understood condition which we call
spinal irritation. Mr. Clifton, in some interesting observa
tion on Agaricus, t speaks of having gained much advantage
from its use in this complaint. He also commends it from
experience in delirium tremens and its non-alcoholic analogue,
in enlargement of liver and spleen, and in chilblains. It is
thoroughly homeopathic to the last-named trouble, judging
from S. 1947 of Allen's pathogenesis ; and Dr. Guernsey
considers chilblains a key - note for the remedy . Some other
uses of the drug have been collected in an article in the
sixth volume of the Bibliothèque Homeopathique ; and
Hahnemann says—“ Apelt has found this drug service
able in pains of the upper jaw -bone and the teeth ; also in
pains of the bones of the lower extremities (as if in the
marrow ), in confluent eruptions of itching papules of the
size of a millet-seed , and in lassitude after coition ."
The medicines most allied to Agaricus seem to be Cannabis
Indica, Hyoscyamus, and Opium .
The lower medium dilutions (3-6) , and not uncommonly
the mother tincture, have been employed.

Before leaving Agaricus, I must say a few words about the

alkaloid which has been recently obtained from it and called
Muscaria . It had been noted of old that in some cases of
poisoning by fungi the power of the vascular system was
* Brit. Journ. of Hom., xxi , 401. Dr. Simmons reports a still larger
experience of the same tenor (see Bayes in loc.).
+ Monthly Hom . Review ., xii , 400 .
I See Pereira, ii , 59.
 AGNUS CASTUS. 79

remarkably depressed. The provers, also, invariably report

reduction of the frequency of the pulse. Physiological
experimentation has now proved that this property resides in
the Muscaria of the fungus, and that its rationale is excitation
of the inhibitory fibres of the vagi, slowing the heart's
action, and ultimately arresting it in diastole. The irrita
bility of the organ itself is unimpaired ; and a dose of
Atropine, which depresses the inhibition , sets it going again .
M. Prevost, of Geneva, has lately instituted experiments
which, confirming these results, show that Muscaria has
much power over the secretions, increasing the lachrymal,
salivary, hepatic, and pancreatic, but diminishing the renal
to entire suppression. Atropine is antidotal to it on all sides
in this sphere also ; so that the whole action is probably
neurotic .
No application has yet, to my knowledge, been made of
these properties of Muscaria .
My next medicine is
Agnus castus.
This plant is only used in homeopathic practice. A
tincture is made from the berries in the usual way.
The pathogenesis of Agnus castus is in Stapf's Additional
Provings : and it is prefaced by a summary of all that is
known concerning the drug. The provers were Hahnemann
and six others.
The name of this plant hints at its special action ; and its
history points the same way . It was used by Athenian
women during religious solemnities, and by mediæval monks,
to repress carnal desire. Its provings show that it really has
this property, depressing sexual instinct and energy without
previous excitation . It is even reported to have caused in
one case permanent extinction of virility. Its therapeutic use
has accordingly been directed against atonic conditions of the
sexual organs. In the hands of Drs. Stapf and Marcy it has
80 AILANTHUS GLANDULOSA .

cured simple impotence in males : and Dioscorides states that

:

it promotes menstruation and the secretion of milk . Its

elective affinity for the sexual organs seems even to render it
effectual against their local diseases; for it is said to have
been occasionally curative of gonorrhea, gleet, induration of
the testes, and leucorrhoea. Dr. Guernsey considers as ch
racteristic of Agnus castus a mental state in which the
patient thinks that it is of no use to do anything, as death is
sure to come soon. This is different from what obtains with
Aconite, where there is fear of immediate death .
Baryta carbonica and muriatica, Camphora, Conium ,
Nuphar lutea, Phosphorus, and Phosphoric acid are the
medicines which in the sexual sphere invite comparison with
Agnus castus.
Drs. Marcy and Stapf both report the 6th dilution as that
with which their success was obtained .

I have now to introduce you to the

Ailanthus glandulosa .
A tincture is prepared from the flowers of this plant, the
“ tree of heaven,” as it is popularly called.
Some few provings of the plant have been made, and are
collected in the article on it in Allen's Encyclopedia. But its
real history as a medicine is to be found in the three papers
to which I shall presently refer.
The story of Ailanthus is a very interesting one. One of
our most accomplished American physicians, Dr. Wells of
Brooklyn, supplies its first chapter.* A child of his own was
seized with all the symptoms of the invasion of malignant
scarlet fever. There was violent vomiting ; severe head
66

ache ; intolerance of light ; dizziness ; hot, red face ; inability

to sit up ; rapid, small pulse ; drowsiness, and at the same
time great restlessness ; much anxiety ; two hours later, the
* Amer . Hom. Review , iv, 385.
 AILANTHUS GLANDULOSA . 81

drowsiness had become insensibility, with constant muttering

delirium ; and she did not recognise the members of her
family. She was now covered , in patches, with an eruption of
miliary rash , with efflorescence between its points, all of a
dark , almost a livid colour ; the eruption was more profuse
upon the forehead and face than elsowhere.” Dr. Wells
gave up his child for lost. But in a few hours a change
came about which gave a new aspect to the case ; and inquiry
ascertained that she had largely sucked the juice of the stalks
of the Ailanthus. Dr. Wells ends his communication by
suggesting the plant as a possible aid in those frightful cases
of scarlatina which prove fatal in the first stage, with the
symptoms of cerebral toxication.
This was written in 1864. But, published in a journal
little known, it seemed to have made no impression. In
1867, however, Mr. Pope, discerning the significance and
value of these facts, called the attention of English readers
to them . * His remarks soon bore fruit. In 1868, Dr.
Chalmers found himself in the midst of an epidemic of
malignant scarlatina. New at that time to the use of
homeopathic remedies, he was disappointed as we have all
probably been ) at their action here ; though allopathy had
nothing better to offer him . His attention was then called
to Mr. Pope's paper. He procured the Ailanthus, and at
once found that he had the agent he needed. The fever was
characterised by a dark -coloured and partial eruption ; and
the effects of the medicine were constantly shown in the
change of this to a rash more bright-hued and general.
With this there was a marked diminution in the frequency,
with more regularity and firmness, of the pulse, along with
restoration to consciousness. “ The result of the treatment by
this drug was, and is, to me” he writes “ a source of sincere
gratification and thankfulness .” +
I have seen no records of the use of Ailanthus since ; but
* Monthly Hom . Review , xi, 286.
+ Ibid ., xii, 713.
6
82 ALLIUM CEPA .

from private information I have reason to know that it fully

answers expectation. Dr. Madden used to tell me and
there was (alas ! that it should be “ was " ) no better observer
—that from what he had seen of its action in London, he had
no doubt of its direct specificity and eminent value.
There are other lesser physiological actions and thera
peutical uses - possible or actual - of Ailanthus ; but I prefer
letting this main one stand by itself, illustrating so vividly as
it does the fruitfulness of the law of similars.
In Dr. Chalmers' cases, and by Dr. Madden, the first
decimal was the dilution used .

You may be amused when , as my next medicine, I mention

the common onion. You will find, however, if you read Dr.
Hering's preface to its proving, that this vegetable was highly
esteemed as a remedy by the ancients, and was credited with
considerable pathogenetic power. We prepare the
Allium cepa

by making a tincture from the bulb of the long red onion.

Dr. Hering proved the onion, chiefly in the mother tincture,
on some dozen persons in 1847. His results, with the state
ments of old authors about it, form one of the pathogeneses
of his Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen , and are translated
therefrom in Allen's Encyclopædia.
It is evident from this proving that the well-known irrita
tion of the eyes and nose produced by the emanations from
the onion are specific effects, as they also result from the
internal use of the tincture. It is hence recommended for
fluent coryza and other nasal defluxions; Dr. Guernsey says,
with acrid secretion. Whether it is needed to occupy a place in
the treatment of these conditions whichEuphrasia, Arsenicum ,
or Kali hydriodicum do not fill, experience only can decide.
In these medicines I have named the analogues of Allium
cepa in its relation to the conjunctival and nasal mucous mem
 ALLIUM SATIVUM . 83

brane. Dr. Hering thinks it occupies a middle place between

Aconite and Ipecacuanha.

The transition from onions to garlic is as natural as it is

alphabetical. We will speak of
Allium sativum .

A tincture prepared like that of Allium cepa is used in

homeopathic practice.
A pathogenesis of garlic, with clinical remarks, was pre
sented by the late Dr. Petroz to the Société Gallicane in
1852, and published in the third volume of its journal. It is
translated , with additional symptoms and therapeutic notes,
by Teste in his Materia Medica ; and some further additions
are made by Allen .
Eructations with salivation ; profuse whitish urine, which
becomes cloudy on the addition of Nitric acid ; much cough,
with glutinous mucus and pains beneath the ribs ; swelling
and tenderness of the mammæ ; and severe pain in the con
joined psoas and iliacus muscles when put in action, seem the
most characteristic symptoms of Allium sativum . It has
cured chronic cough, with profuse mucous expectoration : and
morbid sensibility to the influence of cold air. Petroz wrote
of it_ “ Allium sativum has been of remarkable service in
cases where the herpetic diathesis has manifested itself in the
respiratory or digestive mucous membranes." He considered
a pale red appearance of the tongue, with effaced papillæ ,
pathognomonic of this affection . The old authors esteemed
garlic an excellent remedy for “ phlegm ."
The 6th dilution was most probably that used by \Petroz
and Teste .

My next medicine is one familiar to you as a purgative,

though new as a specific remedy. I speak of
 84 ALOES.

Aloes.
Of the best Socotrine Aloes we make a solution in proof
spirit for our tincture.
A copious pathogenesis of Aloes, obtained from twenty -four
provers, mainly with material doses, is contained in Hering's
Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen . Some fresh provings are
incorporated in Allen's Encyclopædia , where the medicine has
2180 symptoms.
Although, as I say, you have hardly thought of Aloes as a
specific remedy, yet you know a good deal about its specific
action . You know that it is no mere aperient, but has pecu
liar properties. That it purges, however introduced into the
system ; that it affects the large intestine only, especially the
rectum! ; that here also it excites the action of the muscular
coat rather than the secretions of the mucous membrane ,
being thus (as Dr. Druitt calls it) " eccoprotic ;" that it not
unfrequently irritates the rectum and anus, causing heat,
tenesmus , and even hæmorrhoids ; and that thedetermination
of blood it induces towards the lower bowel extends itself
also to the other pelvic viscera, so that the bladder becomes
irritated , and menstruation excited , —these are the teachings
>

of every work n Materia Medica . Our provings confirm

them in every particular. They add evidence that the sexual
instinct also is excited : that thewhole abdomen shares though
to a less degree in the congestion of the pelvis, becoming
distended and tender ; that there is (as Wedekind long ago
taught) a decided action on the liver, shown mainly by dull
pain there ; and that, probably in sympathy with these affec
tions, a heavy headache is caused by the drug. Burning of
the anus and tendency to involuntary stool are also marked
symptoms in the provers .
The use of Aloes in the Homeopathic school has hitherto
been pretty well confined to dysentery. It is especially indi.
cated where the rectum is much affected, where the tenesmus
is severe , and where there is faintness after each stool. Dr.
 ALOES . 85

Holcombe writes— “ Aloes 3rd, a single pellet, once cured for

me almost instantaneously a tenesmus which had endured
for a week or ten days after recovery from dysentery.”
It should be useful in some cases of piles, where the
characteristic symptoms exist; also in pelvic congestions,
in general.* Dr. P. P. Wells recommends it for “ a .
peculiar heavy, dull, pressing pain in the forehead, of no
great severity, but which indisposes to or even incapacitates
for all exertion, especially for intellectual labour. " Also for
a sense of insecurity in the bowels, as if diarrhæa might
occur at any minute, -which is especially prevalent during an
epidemic of Asiatic cholera. Dr. Peters suggests Aloes as
the specific remedy for the “ hæmorrhoidal congestions ” of
various parts described by Schönlein , -if these be anything
more than pathological abstractions. Aloes is said to have
cured falling of the hair . Teste promulgates some curious
experience on this subject. “Aloes, in the 6th dilution , pro
duces and cures falling of the hair in adults. Upon one of
the persons who lent himself to my experimentation , this.
phenomenon was so marked, that a lock of white hair which
this person had on the top of his head, in consequence of a
blow received on this part twenty years before, completely
recovered its black hue, like the rest of his hair. But, in
compensation, the temples were garnished with white hair, )
which, however, disappeared the following month .”
Æsculus, Collinsonia, Nux vomica , and Sulphur compare
with Aloes.
In dysentery, the potencies from the 1st to the 3rd have
been used . Teste, as he mentions, gives the 6th ; and Dr.
Wells prefers the 200th.
* See a case of my own in the Brit. Journ ., xxvii, 336.
 LECTURE VI.

ALUMEN, ALUMINA, AMBRA, AMMONIUM CARBONICUM AND

MURIATICUM, AMYL NITRITE, ANACARDIUM, ANTIMO
NIUM CRUDUM AND TARTARICUM .

We begin to -day with the well- known sulphate of Alumi.

nium and Potassium ,

Alumen ,
or, as commonly called, Alum . It was prepared by tritura
tion in the provings, but the British Homeopathic Pharmaco
paia directs aqueous solutions to be made.
Alum has been proved by ten persons in the third and
higher attenuations. The symptoms obtained were published
by Dr. Hering in his Materia Medica , and are also to be found
in Allen's Encyclopædia .
Of this proving I cannot say much as yet ; and little use
has been made of the medicine in homeopathic practice. I
should not have thought that it had any action beyond that
which it exerts as an astringent, were it not for the high com
mendation it receives from many quarters in lead colic and
constipation, where it must surely act as a simile. It should
be tried for the disorder in small doses, should Opium ever
fail in our hands.
I can, of course, say nothing at present of allied medicines
or dose.
 ALUMINA . 87

And now for

Alumina,
the oxide of Aluminium . It is prepared by trituration.
Alumina was proved by Hahnemann for the second edition
of the Chronic Diseases, where it has 1161 symptoms from
himself and five fellow -observers. I think you will learn
most of the drug's sphere of action by reading the clinical
remarks of Teste and of Peters and Marcy in their articles
upon it.
Alumina seems to affect chiefly the sexual system and the
mucous membranes. Teste says, “ I have often derived the
greatest advantages from the use of this drug in the case of
aged females, against diseases that had been apparently
seated in the sexual system , but whose primary symptoms
had disappeared with the complete cessation of the menstrual
periods. ” It has cured chronic gonorrhea and leucorrhoea,
chronic post- gonorrhæal induration ofthetesticles, and “ raised
itching spots " in the vulva and vagina. In the mucous mem
branes, the characteristic feature indicating Alumina seems to
be dryness with more or less irritation. Thus it has proved
curat in morbid sensitiveness of the nasal mucous mem
brane to cold ; in chronic pharyngitis where the membrane
looks dry, glazed, and red ; in dry hacking coughs from
pharyngeal or laryngeal irritation ; in dyspepsia from defi.
ciency of gastric juice ; and in constipation from lack of
intestinal secretion. It has also cured a frequent desire to
urinate during the night, occurring in an old paralytic . - All
the affections to which Alumina is suitable are of a chronic
character, and occur in old people, or in dry and thin
subjects. I have no experience of the drug myself : it is
very rarely used . Dr. Guernsey says that great difficulty in
expulsion even of aa soft stool is characteristic of it.
Its analogues are Baryta, Conium , and Plumbum ; and its
dilutions those high in the scale.
88 AMBRA GRISEA .

We will now speak of Ambergris,

Ambra grisea.
The substance, as met with in commerce, is triturated for
homeopathic uses.
The proving of Ambra is in the sixth volume of the Materia
Medica Pura : the symptoms (490 in number) were fur
nished by Hahnemann himself and Baron Gersdorff. Dr,
Marcy, in the New Materia Medica, contributes some thera
peutic information concerning the drug.
Ambergris is one of those strongly scented substances, like
Musk , Castor, and Valerian, which disturb sharply but super
ficially the functions of the nervous system . The symptoms
of its pathogenesis all answer to this description. “ Choking
and vomiting can hardly be avoided when hawking up phlegm
from the fauces;" frequent tenesmus, whatever be the cha
racter of the stool ; frequent micturition of pale and copious
urine ; some sexual excitement (it was esteemed of old as an
aphrodisiac) and irritation of the female genitals - are symp
toms of this kind. Ambra is obviously what the therapeutists
of the old school call a " nervine:" it finds its place in the
treatment of nervous and hysterical affections. Depression
with anxiety, sleeplessness, diminished sight and hearing from
mental trouble, spasmodic choking and convulsive cough in
hysterical subjects,-are some maladies of this kind which
Ambra is reported to have cured. Dr. Lawrence Newton has
communicated a case in which Ambra relieved retention of
fæces, from nervous causes, after parturition .* Ambra is also
much commended for nervous vertigo, especially in old people.
Dr. Guérin-Méneville has recently given us, in the fortieth
volume of L'Art Médical, an interesting study of Ambra . He
has directed our attention to an article upon it in the Gazette
des Hôpitaux for 1871, by Dr. Révillout, in which it is much
praised as a subduer of excited reflex action. He also men
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 364. See Hahnemann's S. 185 ..
 AMMONIUM CARBONICUM . 89

tions a case of Dr. Croserio's, where an obstinate prurigo was .

cured by it.
As I have already suggested, Ambra is closely allied with
such medicines as Asafoetida, Moschus, and Valerian .
Hahnemann recommends the third potency, and Marcy the
sixth and twelfth ; but Dr. Revillout has nothing but good to .
report of his material doses.

I have now to give you some account of the homeopathie

uses of Ammonia and its salts. The specific properties of
these substances are few compared with those of a chemical
nature ; hence they play a far less important part in homeo
pathic therapeutics than in those of the old school. Neverthe
less, they exert some dynamic action, of which we must take
cognizance.
There are two salts of Ammonia which have been proved ,,
and of which we have some slight clinical knowledge. The
first is the carbonate,

Ammonium carbonicum ,
of which we make at first watery and subsequently spirituous.
dilutions.
A pathogenesis of Ammonium carbonicum appeared in the
first edition of the Chronic Diseases, containing 159 symptoms.
It was subsequently proved by Nenning on several persons ;
and 479 symptoms from him , including a few from the editors,
appear in Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre. In the
second edition of the Chronic Diseases the foregoing observa
tions are united with some fresh ones from Hahnemann himself
and three others to make aa total of 789. The drug has since
been proved by Professor Martin of Jena on himself and
eleven pupils. The results may be read translated from the
Vierteljahrschrift in the eighteenth volume of the British Journal
of Homeopathy. The symptoms from all these sources are .
incorporated in Allen's article, making a total of 1010.
Very little result followed the doses of a few grains of the salt .
90 AMMONIUI MURIATICUM ,

taken by the lastnamed provers ; and the only specific relations

of Ammonium carbonicum seem to be with the scarlatinal
poison and the respiratory mucous membrane. The power of
the drug in moderate doses over scarlatina is vouched for by
so many practitionersthat there can be no doubt of its reality ;
and homeopathic practitioners have not unfrequently used
it with advantage in this disease, especially where throat
symptoms of a malignant character were prominent. The
bronchial mucous membrane has been found inflamed after
poisoning by it, and in both schools it is in considerable repute
for bronchitic conditions. Its cough is a short and incessant
one, excited by a sensation as of down in the larynx. Dr.
Molin esteems it in phthisis.
Carbonate of ammonia in full doses causes headache ;
and in small ones relieves nervous forms of the malady,
especially when (Dr. Guernsey says) increased by closing
the teeth .
The lowest dilutions have been generally employed .

The other ammonia salt whose proving has given it a place

in the Materia Medica of Homeopathy is the chloride, Sal
ammoniac, or, as we call it,

Ammonium muriaticum .
A trituration of the crystals or a solution in rectified spirit is
used in our practice.
The pathogenesis of Ammonium muriaticum is in the second
edition of the Chronic Diseases, and consists of 397 symptoms
from Hahnemann and three fellow -observers. Some other
experiments with it have been used by Dr. Allen , bringing the
number in his Encyclopædia to 600.
From the experiments of Gumpert it would appear that Sal.
ammoniac has the property, in large and long-continued
doses, of causing a morbid increase in the secretions of all the
mucous membranes in the body, a status pituitosus, " as
 AMMONIUM MURIATICUM . 91

the Germans call it. This is accompanied with chilliness ;

lassitude, sluggishness, and prostration ; loss of appetite ; and
profuse sweating and urination . Later on, a true inter
mittent fever was induced , having the curious character of
recurrence every seventh day. From other researches it
would appear that Ammonium muriaticum diminishes the
plasticity of the blood , and specifically inflames the stomach
and stimulates the spinal cord : it also greatly increases the
elimination of urea .
Many of the uses of Ammonium muriaticum , though in
large doses, are certainly dynamic. It exerts great power
over the chronic catarrhs (the mucous flux of Chambers)
which its pathogenetic effects so much resemble.. As
Dr. Ringer writes, “ All the chlorides of the alkalies increase
considerably the secretion of mucus from the digestive
mucous membrane, and, indeed, do so from all the mem
branes of this class. They may even excite catarrh . This is
* * *
notably the case with chloride of ammonium .
These substances, and especially Sal- ammoniac, are not un
commonly used to remove catarrhal conditions of the intes
tines.” It is in considerable repute for neuralgia of various
kinds, and, if the German physicians are not mistaken , it
exerts an influence upon the liver which is doubtless of a
specific character. Dr. Anstie finds it very useful in the pain
in the liver, with great depression of spirits but no other
symptoms of functional disorder of the organ, which he calls
hepatalgia. In these three spheres the action of the drug
needs investigation, and its trial in small doses might be
essayed. Dr. Carroll Dunham speaks of having had great
success with it in sciatica , where the pain was worst in sitting,
relieved somewhat by walking and entirely by lying down .
Dr. Guernsey considers sense of contraction or actual contrac
tion of the legs a prominent indication for its use .
Sal- ammoniac has some repute against intermittent fevers ::
it should be useful in those seven -day agues which are some
times left after the suppression of quotidians by quinine.
92 AMYL NITRITUM .

In its action on the mucous membranes, Ammonium muria

ticum closely resembles Antimonium crudum and Pulsatilla .
Its dosage is undetermined .

The Acetate of Ammonia— Ammonium aceticum , as we should

call it — has not been proved ; but I would suggest that its
remarkable power of relieving dysmenorrhoea, as shown by the
authorities cited by Marcy and Peters, is of a specific cha
racter. It may be given in the well -known “' Spiritus
Mindereri.” The plain solution of Ammonia - Ammonium
causticum-is rarely used but in veterinary practice. Mr.
Moore seems to esteem it highly in acute bronchial and
pulmonary affections of a severe type occurring in animals.
I have next to speak of
Amyl nitritum .
This now well -known substance is dissolved in rectified spirit
for internal administration .
I have no intention of giving here any detailed account of
the physiological action of Amyl nitrite, as the interest of much
of it is at present limited to that sphere. It may be read at
length in Dr. H. C. Wood's treatise. But its history as a
remedy exhibits well the working of the two cardinal prin
ciples of therapeutics - the antipathic and the homeo
pathic method ; and for both is contained in the literature of
the dominant school.
Amyl nitrite was found to cause (after the fashion familiar
to us in Glonoine) a rapid dilatation of the arteries through
out the body, with quickened but weakened circulation and
respiration. It was at once perceived that it might be useful
in those morbid conditions in which the blood -vessels are
spasmodically contracted. Such is the epileptic paroxysm ,
and such are some forms of angina pectoris and of migraine.
The inference was acted upon , and with most gratifying suc
cess. Angina is for most sufferers robbed of half its terrorg.
 AMYL NITRITUM . 93

by this means of relief. Migraine and other neuralgiæ

accompanied with cold pallor of the surface are often arrested
in their progress by it. When the epileptic aura precedes by
an appreciable interval the actual paroxysms, and when the
petit mal and even the grand mal are recurring frequently ,
a resort to this medicine does much to avert the mischief. Its
use has been occasionally beneficial in other spasms, as in
asthma and spasmodic gastrodynia.
All this is pure antipathy, and affords an exquisite example
of the method , both in its strength aud in its weakness. In
its strength — for the relief afforded is great and rapid ; in its
weakness — for it is palliative and temporary only . It arrests
or mitigates the paroxysms ; butit does nothing to prevent their
recurrence, to cure the disease. It has to be given in ever
increasing doses ; and though the time is yet too short to
demonstrate this, it is to be feared that at length its influence
will be worn out, and it will cease to benefit. Nevertheless,
such as it is, we thankfully avail ourselves of its aid. It is an 14
utter mistake to suppose that we of the school of Hahnemann
debar ourselves — it is an utterly false assumption to say that
we are debarred - from using any remedy, whatever be its
modus operandi, which promises good to our patients. We are as
free as others to use antipathic palliatives : only we know them
for what they are, and do not allow their fascination to lead
us to abuse them , or to neglect to seek a more excellent way .
This better way is the homeopathic and curative ; and in
the case of Nitrite of Amyl it has been trodden for us by Dr.
Ringer. There is aa paroxysmal affection whose essence is not >
contraction , but dilatation, of arteries. It is the “ flushing "
80 common in women at the change of life, but occasionally
troubling them at other times also. This is just the condition
which Amyl nitrite causes ; and - administered in ordinary
doses in the attack itself — it certainly would not benefit. But
given every three hours, and in minute quantities, Dr. Ringer
bas found it of the utmost service in preventing the recurrence
of the flushings. What he says about dose is very interesting.
94 ANACARDIUM ORIENTALE .

“ The author began with a minim dose, but was obliged to

reduce this quantity, and he ultimately found that, for the
>

most part, these patients can bear one third of a minim

without any disagreeable symptoms, but that a tenth, nay
even a thirtieth, of aa minim will in some patients produce the
desired effect on flushing ." This is just the experience of
Hahnemann and his school with medicines generally.
Among ourselves Amyl nitrite has found the ground of
flushings pre-occupied by the similarly acting Glonoine, and
by Lachesis. Nevertheless, it may have a shade of difference
in its action peculiar to itself, and so help us in an occasional
non -plus.

The drug I have next to introduce to you is one of the

many of high repute of yore which had fallen into disuse,
but which the Hahnemannian method has restored to its due
place in medicine. It is the Malacca bean, the product of the
marking -nut tree,
Anacardium orientale .
The oily dark substance which separates the husk from the
kernel, and in which the active virtues of Anacardium seem
to reside, is triturated with sugar of milk .
A proving of Anacardium , containing 622 symptoms from
Hahnemann and seven others, appears in the second edition
of the Chronic Diseases. Dr. Allen adds observations from
three more provers, raising the number of symptoms to 687 ;
and some very interesting facts relative to the action of the
drug on the skin are contained in the New Materia Medica
of Drs. Marcy and Peters.
The ancient reputation of Anacardium was as a remedy for
weakness of the mind, memory , and senses : a preparation of
it was known as the “ confectio sapientium .” Noack and
Trinks mention that Caspar Hoffman called it rather “ con
fectio stultorum ,” because many had lost their memory and
become mad on account of using it too often and incon
 ANACARDIUM ORIENTALE . 95

siderately. They therefore fairly claim its remedial powers for

homeopathy. Our provings and therapeutic records confirm
these observations of the old physicians. Anacardium ap
pears from its pathogenesis in the Chronic Diseases to depress
the cerebral centres and the organs of special sense : and it
has frequently proved curative in weakness of the brain
caused by onanism or remaining after acute diseases. Dr.
Bayes writes, “ When in Cambridge I found it very useful in
steadying the nervous system in funk previous to examination,
as also in removing nervous exhaustion induced by over
study. In sexual debility it is invaluable ; also in cases of
nervous prostration following seminal emissions (whether
involuntary or not) . In these cases I have given three globules
of the 12th dilution , to be taken early next morning, and
repeated in two hours, if needful. When given to steady the
nervous system during unwonted mental labour, I have
usually prescribed two or three doses a day.” It is an im
portant remedy in dementia, and in too rapid loss of memory
and mental vigour in old persons ; also in amblyopia and
nervous deafness. It has removed an hallucination of a
dyspeptic which took the form of aa belief that a demon was
pursuing him . It has also cured paralysis of the tongue.
Later researches have shown that Anacardium has a re
markable influence upon the skin . In its slightest degree of
action it causes the appearance of wheals like those of urti
caria tuberosa , with itching, burning, and swelling, termi
nating in desquamation. When operating more intensely it
developes eczematous vesicles, and even bullæ . I am not
aware that it has been used as yet as a cutaneous remedy ;
but it deserves attention in some forms of nettle- rash , eczema,
and pemphigus, and even in vesicular erysipelas. It would
probably help in cases of nervous disorder induced by repelled
cutaneous eruptions.
In the cerebral sphere, Anacardium resembles Phosphoric
acid and Zinc; in its action on the skin Apis, Rhus, and
Urtica .
 96 ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM .

Both high and low dilutions seem to have been used with
advantage.
Having now run rapidly through these minor medicines,
we will address ourselves for the remainder of this lecture to
the important remedies afforded by the preparations of Anti
mony.
Of these we have two in common use ,-the ter -sulphide,
Antimonium crudum ; and the potassio -tartrate, Tartar emetic.
The former may be considered to represent the various
«
preparations of the metal— “ butter ” and “ glass of anti
mony," crocus metallorum , " “ kermes mineral" and so
forth - which gained its repute of old, and are still in use in
France and Italy. The latter, while partaking of these pro
perties, has aa field of action all its own .

First, of
Antimonium crudum .
The purified ore is triturated for our use.
Antimonium crudum is the subject of one of the new
pathogeneses of the second edition of the Chronic Diseases.
But this is not therefore to be ignored : for more than four
fifths of it are taken from an earlier pathogenesis, contained
in the second volume of the Arzneimittellehre of Hartlaub and
Trinks ; and the symptoms therein are stated to have been
observed on healthy persons taking various doses of the first
trituration. These, therefore appearing under the guarantee
of Hartlaub and Caspari), may be accepted ; while the addi.
tions of Hahnemann and Langhammer may be passed by.
Hahnemann's pathogenesis also contains 71 symptoms from
authors (of which 50 were collected by Hartlaub and Trinks).
These are from various preparations,—most commonly from
the so -called “ glass of antimony," a sulphuretted ter -oxide,
containing silica . They must be used with caution, as being
too often the mere mechanical effects, as deafness and hernia ,
 ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM . 97

-of the violent vomiting induced by the drug. With the

pathogenesis of Antimonium crudum may be read a proving
of the golden sulphide, in doses varying from gr. 1 to gr. x,
by Dr. Mayerhofer. It is translated from Hirschel's Zeit
schrift (xix, 27) in Allen's Encyclopædia.
The condition set up by Antimonium crudum seems to be one
of depressed vitality of the mucous membranes and the skin.
The action hardly goes on to inflammation. The mucous
membranes are loaded with mucus, giving rise to slow diges
tion with fermentation of the food, nausea, and occasional
vomiting ; alternate constipation and diarrhea, with mucous
discharge from the anus ; much hawking and expectoration
of phlegm ; and irritability of the bladder with mucous
sediment. The secretions and the flatulence are of a foul
odour ; and there is drowsiness, and loss of flesh and strength .
This is the “ mucous flux ” I have already spoken of whil
upon Ammonium muriaticum : but here there is no tendency
to fever. The condition of mucous membrane described
finds its parallel in the cutaneous disorder caused by Anti
monium crudum . Parts readily become sore ; and pimples,
tubercles, and pustular eruptions are developed . When these
gastric and cutaneous affections appear in practice, Anti
monium crudum will often prove an excellent remedy. I have
the utmost confidence in it in chronic gastric catarrh,
where the tongue is thickly coated with a milky or granular
white fur. Eructations tasting of the ingesta are a sympto
matic indication for it here. It is useful in that “ diseased
condition of the intestinal lining in children which favours
the development of worms" (Hempel) . Among skin affec
tions it has cured nettlerash when dependent on gastric dis
order ; the sore eyelids, ears, and nose of scrofulous children ,
and not unfrequently eczema.* Dr. Clotar Muller has spoken
recently of “its extraordinary efficacy in affections of the
skin. I have reason to think, ” he writes, “ that Antimonium
* See two cases of eczema impetiginoides cured by it in Brit. Journ. of
Hom ., xxiv, 312.
7.
98 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

crudum is an invaluable remedy in all cutaneous affections

where pimples, pustules, pocks, or furancular elevations arise
primarily or secondarily, especially when at the same time
there is severe continued pricking itching of the skin, and
after rubbing tenderness and soreness ." * It is particularly
useful, he adds, when such phenomena occur on the face or
the genitals, as in impetigo scroti. We shall see that these
are the favorite habitats of the specific eruption of Tartar
emetic.
A curious symptom recorded by Caspari is—“large horny
places on the skin of the soles of the feet, close to where the
toes commence, which pained like corns, and always returned
after having been cut out.” Hahnemann and Dr. Guernsey
both lay stress on a tendency to these callosities as indicative
of Antimonium crudum ; and a striking case is recorded by
Dr. Alvarez Gonzales, where one of twenty years' standing ,
involving the entire sole, and very sensitive, was soon cured
by it. +
Antimonium crudum may yet find a place in some of those
syphilitic and other constitutional affections for which the
antimonial preparations were of old reputed as alteratives, and
which gave the metal its “ currus triumphalis " in spite of
the opposition of the profession.
Its analogues are Ammonium muriaticum , Kali bichromicum ,
Petroleum , and Pulsatilla .
The attenuations from the 3rd to the 12th have been most
in use : I myself have always employed the 6th.
And now of

Antimonium tartaricum .
Under this heading we will consider the “ Tartar emetic,”
* Brit. Journ . of IIom ., xxxii, 241.
† Amer. Journ. of Ilom . Mat. Med ., iii, 38.
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 99

which is still the common name of the salt. As regards its

preparation, “ the 1 , when required, must be a trituration,
7

but its solubility in water admits of 1 being a solution.

Dilute alcohol may be used after 2.” So speaks the British
Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. The “ antimonial wine ” of
the old pharmacy is a convenient form : it contains two grains
to the ounce, i.e. about one part in 240.
Tartar emetic has no place in any of our classical col.
lections of pathogeneses. But provings of it have been made
from time to time in our body, from Hahnemann downwards.
These are collected , together with numerous poisonings, in
the article on it in Allen's Encyclopædia, which has 970
symptoms. In addition to this, I would direct attention to
the large collection of facts about its over-action contained in
the New Materia Medica ; to a study of its influence on the
skin, by Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre, translated from the Gazette
Médicale de Paris in the nineteenth volume of the British Jour
nal of Homeopathy ; and to a monograph on Antimony, by
Dr. Madden and myself, in the twenty -fifth volume of the
last -named periodical.
The best known action of Tartar emetic — that to which it
owes its name — is its power of producing nausea and vomiting.
The nausea which it causes is very intense and long lasting.
Dr. Wood thus describes the general condition, which , in
addition to the peculiar sensation referred to the epigastrium ,
is known as “ nausea .” “ The face," he writes, “ is pale, the
skin cool, moist and relaxed , the pulse feeble, frequent, and
often irregular, the saliva flows copiously , and feelings
are usually experienced of gastric uneasiness, languor, and
unusual weakness, which are sometimes in the highest degree
distressing, so much so as, if long continued, to render the
patient utterly prostrate in body and mind, and indifferent to
all things around him , even to life itself." To these symptoms
should be added universal muscular relaxation. Vomiting
comes on comparatively late, though sooner than from Ipeca
cuanha . When it once begins it is energetic, effectual,
100 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

repeated, and prolonged. The vomited matters are often

bilious, from extension of the action to the duodenum.
The emetic influence of tartarized Antimony appears to be
purely neurotic in its modus operandi. The numerous muscular
movements whose harmonious play produces the complex act
called vomiting are under the control of the nervous centres
at the base of the brain and in the medulla oblongata , and
are specially effected through the medium of the pneumo
gastric nerves. That Tartar emetic acts directly on these
centres and through these nerves is shown, positively, by the
fact that it causes vomiting when injected into the veins or
rectum , or rubbed into the skin, as well as when introduced
into the stomach, and in the latter mode of administration is
emetic in doses too small to irritate the mucous mem
brane ; negatively, by the experiment of dividing the vagi on
both sides, when neither Antimony nor any other emetic will
act. How the complex act of vomiting is brought about,
and how the general condition called nausea is connected
with it, are problems which physiology has not yet solved ,
and with which, therefore, pharmacology may not trouble
itself.
Entirely independent of the above phenomena, though
moving in the same sphere, and sometimes consentaneous with
them, are the remarkable effects of Tartar emetic upon the
circulation and respiration.
When this drug is administered in large doses, there is
either an entire absence of nausea , vomiting, and purging ; or,
after a short time during which these symptoms continue,
the system appears to become tolerant of the drug, and they
subside. Then the pulse is found to have fallen one fifth or
even one fourth of its normal number of beats, and the respi.
ration to be lowered in even a greater ratio. M. Trousseau
has known it fall from twenty and twenty -four times in a
minute to six. “ It is singular,"" writes Dr. Wood, "“ that
under these circumstances of great circulatory and respi
ratory depression the mind is wholly unaffected, the muscles
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 101

retain their strength, and the organic functions, with the

exception of the two referred to, appear not to suffer. Thus
it is seen that this condition differs toto cælo from that
induced by nausea.” It should be added that the force as
well as the frequency of the heart's action is diminished by
the drug, and that “ sometimes, instead of being reduced
regularly, the pulse becomes at first irregular and intermittent
under its use, " as is often noticed with Digitalis.
In seeking to explain these phenomena, we must obviously
look for some source of influence common to the cardiac and
respiratory movements, by means of which Antimony may
consentaneously reduce the frequency of both : and this we
have in the pneumogastric nerves. It is well known that a
moderately strong galvanic current passed through these
nerves towards the heart will retard and ultimately stop the
movements of the latter organ. It is not so well known that
a strong current passed centripetally along these same nerves
will stop the movements of respiration, the stimulus being
reflected upon the diaphragm and the muscles of expiration ,
causing general tonic spasm . A less degree of the same
excitation will simply retard the expiratory movements. We
bave only then to suppose that Tartar emetic excites centri
petally the pulmonary and centrifugally the cardiac branches of
the vagi, and we have its circulatory and respiratory depression
explained . If it act upon the nuclei of these nerves, it cannot
but affect the pulmonary branches, which are centripetal,
centripetally , and the cardiac branches, which are centrifugal,
centrifugally ; and that it does act upon these nuclei we
have already shown when speaking of its power of producing
vomiting.
The interest of these last phenomena is physiological rather
than practical. The “ contra -stimulant ” method of Rasori,
to which it belongs, is rarely practised now ; and in the
school of Hahnemann was excluded from the first. Nor does
the emetic power of the drug play so important a part in
homoeopathic therapeutics as might be expected. We use it,
 102 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

of course, to check the kind of vomiting it causes ; but this

rarely comes before us in comparison with that of Ipeca
cuanha, of Kreasote, and of Apomorphia. Nevertheless,
when it occurs — as in cases recorded by Dr. Bayes and
Nankivell — Tartar emetic will do all that is required of it.
The presence, moreover, of nausea and vomiting in diseases
otherwise calling for it will always indicate it additionally ;
and these will, as Dr. Ringer states in reference to bronchitis,
be amongst the first symptoms to yield to its use . But its
· most important sphere of action for homeopathists lies in
the mucous membranes and the skin (herein resembling
Antimonium crudum , but acting much more sharply) ; and in
the lungs.
1. There are two forms of 'morbid action set up by Tartar
emetic in the mucous membranes. The first is that peculiar
kind of inflammation we call catarrhal. In the second we
have on the mucous membranes the same pustular eruption
on an erythematous base which we shall see to be the specific
effect of the drug upon the cutaneous tissues.
Thus, in the alimentary canal a catarrhal gastritis and
enteritis are set up : it is found after death lined with a
whitish -yellow viscid secretion. In two cases of poisoning
observed by Dr. Wood , the matters vomited and purged
were white and liquid, without a trace of bile, resembling
opaque rice -water. Post-mortem appearances show the sto
mach and small intestines to be most affected ; the glands of
the latter, especially those of the ileum , have not uncommonly
been found enlarged. On the other hand, the pustular erup
tion characteristic of Antimony has been seen in the jejunum ,
the stomach, and the lower third of the æsophagus, but is
most severe and constant about the mouth and throat. In
this latter region it begins with a feeling of tension, and
other disagreeable sensations, and a metallic taste ; patches
of erythematous inflammation then appear, upon which come
aphthæ , vesicles soon going on to pustules, and even false
membranes. Upon the respiratory mucous membrane the
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 103

influence of Tartar emetic is almost purely of the catarrhal

character, though pustules are said to have been seen in the
larynx. The nares escape untouched ; but the inflammation ,
beginning in the larynx, becomes intense in the trachea and
bronchi. The production of this inflammation under the
influence of Tartar emetic has been established , not only by
post -mortem appearances in animals, but by the symptoms of
the living, as in the experiments of Dr. Molin of which I
shall immediately speak. Irritation of the genito -urinary
mucous membrane is not marked among the effects of Tartar
emetic.
And now what of the lungs ? Does the irritant influence
of Tartar emetic upon the respiratory mucous membrane
extend to the air - cells themselves, so as to set up pneumonia ?
The importance of the question is obvious, as its answer in
the affirmative would claim for homeopathy one of the most
cherished pieces of practice known. You are probably aware
that Majendie so answered it. In the dogs poisoned by him
he states that the lungs were always more or less affected :
they were of an orange- red or violet colour according to the
age of the animal) throughout, destitute of crepitation,
gorged with blood , and in some parts hepatized . Before
death the respiration had been embarrassed and hurried .
Lepelletier independently confirmed these observations ; and
daively remarked— “ One would imagine that, admitting its
action in man to be similar, far from being useful, its adminis
tration would be particularly pernicious in pneumonia ; but
it is not so , for, instead of favouring engorgement of the lung,
it promotes its resolution."
Such facts were too unpalatable for reception , although
Majendie was an accredited observer, and his description of
the phenomena unmistakeable. Counter-experiments were
performed by Rayer and Campbell, in which no pneumonia
was set up by Tartar emetic ; and Ackermann has more
recently promulgated the same experience. But Dr. Molin
of Paris, in an able thesis on the subject, points out that the
104 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

large doses used by Rayer produced death so rapidly that the

inflammation of the lungs had no time to develope itself.
His own experiments, in which the animals were slowly
poisoned , corroborate those of Majendie: the post -mortem
investigation showed pneumonia in its first or second stage,
together with an intense tracheo -bronchitis characterised by
abundant exudation . Still farther to clear up the subject,
Dr. Molin instituted some careful provings on himself with
small doses of the drug (gr. 1- ). On two successive
occasions he developed in himself all the signs, rational and
physical, of the first stage of broncho- pneumonia, with marked
inflammatory fever. Some experiments on rabbits by Dr.
Nevin, recorded by Marcy and Peters, corroborate those now
stated . He says— “ The lungs and trachea were frequently
congested, sometimes highly inflamed, the two lungs seldom
alike." I should mention that in Dr. Molin's experiments
the inflammation of the bronchial tubes was observed, even
where the animals died before the pneumonia had time to be
developed.
The facts seem proved ; and Ringer and Nothnagel in our
own day accept them. Their moral is obvious. The well.
known curative action of Tartar emetic in bronchitis and
pneumonia is after all an instance of the law of similars.
You have hitherto in all probability acquiesced in the com
mon belief that it acts in these cases by its general antiphlo
gistic power , in virtue of its depressing influence upon the
circulation and liquefacient action on the blood. But were
this its only or even chief modus operandi, it ought to be
beneficial alike in all inflammations, wherever occurring.
That it is not so, your own therapeutists freely admit. In
inflammations of the respiratory mucous membrane it is
invaluable ; when other parts, as the serous membranes, are
affected, it does little or nothing. Even from this alone it
would appear that the drug has some specific relation to this
part of the organism : and we have already seen it acting as
a specific irritant of the trachea, the bronchi, and the lungs.
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 105

We conclude, therefore, that Tartar emetic must be a true

homeopathic remedy against certain kinds of tracheal, bron .
chial, and pulmonary inflammation. The experience of our
school has verified its value in catarrhal (and in the first stage
of membranous ) croup : in the second stage of bronchitis in
infants and aged persons, when the mucus is profuse and
the expulsive power feeble, so that much rattling of phlegm
is audible : and in the second stage of the pneumonia of the
same subjects, where there is little pain but much dyspnea.
It is obviously broncho- pneumonia (comp. Phosphorus) rather
than pleuro -pneumonia (Bryonia) to which Tartar emetic is
homeopathic : * but it is altogether less potent than either
of these medicines to subdue pulmonary inflammation ; while
in bronchitis it excels both. The drug has also several
times proved curative, in the hands of Drs. Wurmb and
Caspar of Vienna, of acute ædema of the lungs. I have
myself seen this condition , occurring in the course of general
dropsy, subside entirely under the use of Tartar emetic. It
is also very useful in chronic coughs, where the expectoration
is profuse and easy , and of a mucous nature . Dr. Ringer
recommends it, in doses of 1-80th of a grain , for children in
whom bronchitic asthma recurs very frequently.
We have little experience of Tartar emetic in affections of
the alimentary canal. It should be serviceable in aphthous,
pustular, and other eruptive diseases of the mucous membrane ;
-perhaps in the aphthous mouth and throat of those dying
from exhausting diseases, as phthisis. I have tried it, but
with no consistent success, in cholera infantum , to which it
seems strikingly homeopathic, and for which we sadly want
a perfect remedy.
2. I have yet to speak of the action of Tartar emetic upon
the skin. You know well the peculiar pustular inflammation
which is excited by the local application of the drug. If your
memory needs refreshing as to its characters, you will find
You will find the place of Tartar emetic in pneumonia very fully
discussed by Dr. CI. Müller, in Laurie's Hom . Practice of Physic, p. 282.
106 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM ,

them described at length in our article. But it may be a

new idea to you, that this effect of Tartar emetic belongs to
it, not as a mere local irritant, but as a dynamic agent.
Nothing, however, can be more clearly demonstrated than is
this thesis by Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre, in the paper I have
already referred to. He first quotes nineteen observations to
show that, when Tartar emetic is used locally, pustular erup
tions are apt to occur on other parts of the body, especially
about the scrotum and labia, and the anus ; and this without
the possibility of the mechanical transference of the ointment .
He then cites five instances in which eruptions, closely
resembling those produced by Tartar emetic ointment and
that also which characterises variola ), have appeared during
the internal administration of the drug . * Lastly, he adduces
evidence to prove that the local effect of the drug is not pro
duced till after a day or two, and sometimes does not appear
at all at the spot of application , but on some other part of
the body. Coupling these facts with the peculiar and specific
character of the eruption, and with the frequent occurrence
of similar pustules on the internal mucous surfaces under the
use of the drug, he comes fairly to the conclusion that Anti
mony is a specific and dynamic “« exanthematogenic," — its
characteristic eruption being pustular.
The precise form of cutaneous eruption to which Tartar
emetic corresponds is ecthyma. “ The pustules,” says Erasmus
Wilson, " following the irritation of tartarized antimony are
ecthymatous." A case of this disease cured by Tartar emetic
is given in the New Materia Medica . It is less suitable or
serviceable in impetigo, 7 save in one form of the disease, the
impetigo erysipelatodes. Here I have found it as cura
tive as it is homeopathic. But the deepest interest of Tartar
emetic in this sphere lies in its relation to variola . Not only
* Two additional cases of this kind are cited in the New Materia Medica,
and Tardieu recognises the fact.
† But see cases by Dr. Dudgeon in the Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxvi, 311 ,
and xxix, 405 .
 ANTIMOXIUM TARTARICUM . 107

does it cause a specific pustular eruption closely resembling

that of smallpox, but it has also the vomiting, the pustules
of mouth and throat, the viscid mucus clogging the air
passages, and the hypinosis of the blood, which no less
characterise the disease . Still further, the inoculation of the
lymph of Tartar emetic pustules appears to effect results
analogous to those of vaccination. The pustules produced
are precisely similar in appearance to those of cow -pock ; they
in their turn can excite fresh pustules by inoculation ; and
they are said ( though this requires confirmation, and is
indeed hardly credible) to confer the same protection from
smallpox. Correspondingly with this close homeopathicity,
the power of Tartar emetic as a remedy for variola is very
great. Testimonies to its value are collected in the New
Materia Medica : it is said to be especially useful in cases
:

where the respiratory mucous membrane is much affected.

I myself have invariably used Tartar emetic (in the first
trituration , as the medicine for smallpox, and have rarely
had occasion to substitute any other. I cannot say that it
cuts short the disease ; it is doubtful whether any medicine
can . But it seems to me to conduct the cases through in a
very satisfactory manner, decidedly mitigating all the inci
dental troubles, and leaving very little pitting behind .
I have now described the three great spheres of the action
of Tartar emetic, —the pneumogastric nerve, the respiratory
mucous membrane, and the skin. There are other forms of
disease in which it is often curative. One of these is delirium
tremens, where much gastric disorder of saburral kind is
present, as when beer has been the intoxicating drink em
ployed. Another is lumbago, and similar so - called “ muscu
lar rheumatisms," in which Dr. Bähr in Germany and Dr.
Lawrence Newton in this country have praised it highly .
It is also reckoned by Dr. Angell, in his excellent treatise on
Diseases of the Eye, a prime remedy for photophobia ; I have
recently had a good opportunity of verifying his recommen
dation. In connection with this it may be mentioned that
108 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

Dr. Ringer recommends it, in doses of gr. 36 to 48 in strumous

ophthalmia .
Ipecacuanha is the medicine most closely allied to Tartar
emetic. Then we have, as acting like it on the pneumogastric,
Digitalis, Lobelia , Tabacum, and Veratrum viride; on the re
spiratory organs, Phosphorus ; on the skin , Antimonium crudum
and Clematis.
The success of old-school practice with Tartar emetic in
croup, bronchitis, and pneumonia shows that these diseases do
not need very infinitesimal doses of the drug. In these, and
in variola, the homeopathic school has generally used
the second, rarely the third decimal potency. Higher
dilutions (12 - 15) seem to answer well in ædema pul.
monum .

The correspondences and divergences of the application of

Tartar emetic in the two schools respectively are surely very
instructive. The drug is known as an emetic, a depressant of
the circulation, and a specific remedy in acute pulmonary
affections. Ours is the direct opposite of the first of these
three uses : for we cure vomiting with the drug instead of
causing it. The second we reject utterly. The third we
claim for homøopathy, and, in the light of the law of simi
lars, define its range and precisionize its application .
 LECTURE VII .

APIS, ARGENTUM METALLICUM AND NITRICUM , ARNICA.

We will begin to -day's lecture with

Apis mellifica.
This is the poison of the honey bee, and is (it need hardly
be said) peculiar to homeopathic practice. It is prepared for
use in more than one way. A trituration of the whole bees ,
dried ; or a tincture prepared by macerating their hinder
parts, after killing them while in a state of excitement, have
been used , and seem to contain the virtues of the medicine.
But a better preparation would be a solution of the virus
itself in alcohol or glycerine. It can be obtained, as Dr.
Hering suggests, by seizing the bee by its wings and causing
it to eject its poison upon a piece of sugar, or by grasping the
sting of aa stupefied bee with aa small pair of nippers, and gra
dually drawing out the sting and poison bags together. A
new preparation is suggested in the British Homeopathic
Pharmacopæia, to which I refer you for it.
Apis has been proved , both in the trituration and in the
solution of the virus above mentioned, by the Central New
York State Homeopathic Society. The results, published in
its Transactions, appear in schema form in Metcalf's collection .
They are also published, incorporated with effects of bee
stings and with new symptoms obtained on the healthy or
observed on patients taking the drug, in Hering's Ameri
kanische Arzneiprufungen, and again in Allen's Encyclopædia.
110 APIS MELLIFICA .

Numerous clinical cases are appended to Metcalf's arrange

ment ; and others are to be read in Marcy and Peters, in the
eleventh and twelfth volumes of the British Journal of Homæo .
pathy, and in the Bibliothèque Homoeopathique for 1874-5 .
The medicine now to be discussed differs in important
respects from the substances we have been accustomed to
regard as drugs. We have to believe that the symptoms
known to result from the sting of a bee are also in some
degree produced when the virus of the insect, in a diluted
form, is taken into the stomach. In noting, moreover, the
homeopathic indications for the remedial use of the virus,
we shall depend much upon the phenomena of bee- stinging ;
and shall take it for granted that similar phenomena occur
ring in disease are properly treated by the internal adminis
tration of the poison. Such assumptions at one time raised
considerable difficulty, on the ground of the supposed inert
ness of animal poisons when introduced through the digestive
mucous membrane : and in previous editions of this work I
had to discuss the subject. It is now needless to do so ; for,
as Drs. Brunton and Fayrer state, * it has been clearly shown
that serpent-poison acts when introduced into the stomach,
or when applied to a mucous or serous membrane. “The
idea , ” say they, “that it is only effective when injected
directly into the blood, is erroneous ; though it is, no doubt,
more certainly and rapidly fatal when it enters the blood
>
direct."
Let us consider the local effects of a bee- sting. The part
rapidly swells up, becomes more or less hot and red, with a
tense pain , and often considerable burning, tingling, and itch.
ing. This is the simplest and most characteristic form of the
pathogenetic influence of Apis. It is an acute oedema, the
cellular tissue being more affected than the skin . Whenever
a similar condition occurs idiopathically, whether on cutaneous
or mucous surfaces, Apis will be found curative. Acute
* Trans. of Royal Society for Jan. 22, 1874, reported in Lond . Med .
Record , ii, 109. See also Monthly Hom . Rev., xvi, 673.
 APIS MELLIFICA . 111

ædema occurring on the skin is a form of erysipelas ; and in

this disease Apis is a prime remedy. It stands between
Belladonna and Rhus, not controlling intense cutaneous in
flammation like the former, or the tendency to form vesicles
like the latter, but acting most efficiently in its own sphere of
cedema. Then there is a species of sore throat in which Apis
is specific. There is no very great redness or pain as with
Belladonna, nor is the parenchyma of the tonsils inflamed as
when Baryta carbonica is the remedy ; but there is general
ædema of the submucous cellular tissue covering the tonsils,
uvula , soft palate, and even the posterior portion of the hard
palate. When you look at the throat it seems as if a bee had
flown in and stung the patient there. If the numerous cases
of angina cured by Apis which have been put on record be
studied, they will be found to have been of this character.
Such a sore throat is not uncommonly an extension of erysi
pelas, as the late Dr. Todd describes it in his Clinical Lectures.
It is often , also, the beginning of ædema glottidis, in which
Apis is the great remedy. It proved curative of an instance
of this affection , where the cause was drinking water from a
kettle.* Such cases are commonly fatal.
There are two specific diseases in which the throat is often
affected in the way of acute ædema, and to which Apis, thus
indicated, bears an important therapeutic relation. These
are diphtheria and scarlatina . Facts are accumulating which
point to Apis as a prime remedy in the former disease. Drs.
Baumann and V. Meyer in Germany, Kallenbach in Holland,
and Jahr in France, concur to esteem it the best anti-diph
theritic we have ;t and my own experience points in the same
direction. In the last case I had I found it remove every
thing but the coryza, which yielded to Kali bichromicum.
In scarlatina Apis is obviously indicated for the anginose
form , where there is more ædema than ulceration. But Apis
* Monthly Hom . Rev., xiii, 364.
† See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 613, 775.
I Ibid ., p. 738.
112 APIS MELLIFICA .

has also the action on the kidneys and skin characteristic of

this poison . Mr. Nankivell noticed in a patient affected by it
that a patch of skin on the arm remained white amid the
surrounding redness, and was informed that this spot had
been a short time previously the seat of the inflammation
resulting from the sting of a bee. He and others have used
it here with success. It is especially indicated in irregular
and adynamic forms of the disease ; as when the eruption is
repelled, or does not come out well. A typical case of the
kind is given by Dr. Chepmell in his “ Hints . ” Dr. Guernsey
says that the alternation of perspiration and dryness of the
skin is characteristic of it here.
Other forms of acute ædema are inflammations of the
tongue and of the labia pudendi ; in both of which Apis
has been found curative. Indeed, if this pathological condition
be borne in mind as the keynote of the medicine, it will
rarely be used in vain .
We have still remaining the burning, itching, and tingling
of our bee-sting,-features by no means common in idiopathic
ædema. They rather point to cutaneous dysæsthesiæ and
eruptions, into which, indeed, in the provers they are seen
developed. The exanthem induced generally resembles urti
caria, in which disorder Apis is our great remedy. It has also
cured cases of lichen and of erythema nodosum ; and is gene
rally indicated in skin affections not going on to destruction
of tissue, but accompanied with excessive itching, especially of
a burning and stinging character.
Urticaria, like erysipelas, may manifest itself internally.
Here also we have acute ædema, but without the tendency
to suppuration belonging to the erysipelatous form . The
distressing and sometimes even dangerous symptoms arising
from this cause have several times been successfully encoun
tered by Apis .*
In acute ædema, erysipelatous and urticarious, we have the
* See Erasmus Wilson on Diseases of the Skin , article “ Urticaria, ” and
cases 14, 16 , 28 in Dr. Metcalf's paper.
 APIS MELLIFICA . 113

pathological condition most characteristic of Apis : and upon

this I am desirous of fixing your attention. But both prov.
ings and therapeutic records credit the medicine with a range
far wider than this, as will appear from what follows.
1. The mucous membranes are not influenced in their gene
ral extent by Apis : but at certain spots it manifests great
power. It inflames the conjunctiva : and has frequently
proved curative in catarrhal and scrofulous ophthalmia. It
is where the cornea is much involved that its most striking
curative results are seen. It causes hoarseness and dry
cough : and is often useful in subacute and chronic laryngo
tracheal irritation , of a mild type ( comp. Rumex crispus and
Carbo vegetabilis). It irritates the stomach, and somewhat
the bowels ; it is one of the best remedies for diarrhea recur
ring every morning, the motions greenish -yellow and painless
( comp. again with Rumex crispus). It is very decidedly irri.
tant to the kidneys and neck of the bladder (as Cantharis) .
Dr. Marcy recommends it in incipient Bright's disease, in
inflammation of the neck of the bladder, and in “ irritable
bladder. "
2. Apis acts rather powerfully in the ovario-uterine sphere.
Few medicines cause so many ovarian symptoms : and it has
more than once provoked miscarriage when given to pregnant
women . It has proved curative in amenorrhea, dysmenor
rhoea, and menorrhagia , when resulting from active congestion
ef the ovaries :: and even in chronic affections of the latter
organs. The presence of a “ stinging " pain is said to indi.
cate it here. I know of no certain evidence, however, to
custain the vague notion which seems to obtain of its power
of curing ovarian dropsy .
3. I come now to the important question ,-what power has
Apis over dropsy, general and local ? It is credited with
almost unbounded curative virtues in this disease ; but I
think discrimination is needed . Its action on the kidneys is
sufficient to make it a most useful, because homeopathic,
remedy in acute febrile dropsy from a chill, in post-scarlatinal
8
104 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

large doses used by Rayer produced death so rapidly that the

inflammation of the lungs had no time to develope itself.
His own experiments, in which the animals were slowly
poisoned, corroborate those of Majendie : the post-mortem
investigation showed pneumonia in its first or second stage,
together with an intense tracheo -bronchitis characterised by
abundant exudation. Still farther to clear up the subject,
Dr. Molin instituted some careful provings on himself with
small doses of the drug (gr. 12- ). On two successive
occasions he developed in himself all the signs, rational and
physical, of the first stage of broncho- pneumonia, with marked
inflammatory fever. Some experiments on rabbits by Dr.
Nevin , recorded by Marcy and Peters, corroborate those now
stated . He says— “ The lungs and trachea were frequently
congested, sometimes highly inflamed , the two lungs seldom
3
alike." I should mention that in Dr. Molin's experiments
the inflammation of the bronchial tubes was observed, even
where the animals died before the pneumonia had time to be
developed .
The facts seem proved ; and Ringer and Nothnagel in our
own day accept them . Their moral is obvious. The well.
known curative action of Tartar emetic in bronchitis and
pneumonia is after all an instance of the law of similars.
You have hitherto in all probability acquiesced in the com
mon belief that it acts in these cases by its general antiphlo
gistic power, in virtue of its depressing influence upon the
circulation and liquefacient action on the blood. But were
this its only or even chief modus operandi, it ought to be
beneficial alike in all inflammations, wherever occurring.
That it is not so, your own therapeutists freely admit. In
inflammations of the respiratory mucous membrane it is
invaluable ; when other parts, as the serous membranes, are
affected, it does little or nothing. Even from this alone it
would appear that the drug has some specific relation to this
part of the organism : and we have already seen it acting as
a specific irritant of the trachea, the bronchi, and the lungs.
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 105

We conclude, therefore, that Tartar emetic must be a true

homæopathic remedy against certain kinds of tracheal, bron
chial, and pulmonary inflammation . The experience of our
school has verified its value in catarrhal (and in the first stage
of membranous) croup : in the second stage of bronchitis in
infants and aged persons, when the mucus is profuse and
the expulsive power feeble, so that much rattling of phlegm
is audible : and in the second stage of the pneumonia of the
same subjects, where there is little pain but much dyspnea.
It is obviously broncho -pneumonia (comp. Phosphorus) rather
than pleuro -pneumonia (Bryonia ) to which Tartar emetic is
homeopathic : * but it is altogether less potent than either
of these medicines to subdue pulmonary inflammation ; while
in bronchitis it excels both. The drug has also several
times proved curative, in the hands of Drs. Wurmb and
Caspar of Vienna, of acute ædema of the lungs. I have
myself seen this condition, occurring in the course of general
dropsy, subside entirely under the use of Tartar emetic. It
is also very useful in chronic coughs, where the expectoration
is profuse and easy, and of a mucous nature. Dr. Ringer
recommends it, in doses of 1-80th of a grain, for children in
whom bronchitic asthma recurs very frequently.
We have little experience of Tartar emetic in affections of
the alimentary canal. It should be serviceable in aphthous,
pustular, and other eruptive diseases of the mucous membrane;
-perhaps in the aphthous mouth and throat of those dying
froin exhausting diseases, as phthisis. I have tried it, but
with no consistent success, in cholera infantum , to which it
seems strikingly homeopathic, and for which we sadly want
a perfect remedy.
2. I have yet to speak of the action of Tartar emetic upon
the skin . You know well the peculiar pustular inflammation
which is excited by the local application of the drug. If your
memory needs refreshing as to its characters, you will find
• You will find the place of Tartar emetic in pneumonia very fully
discussed by Dr. Cl. Müller, in Laurie's Hom . Practice of Physic, p .282.
106 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

them described at length in our article . But it may be a

new idea to you, that this effect of Tartar emetic belongs to
it, not as a mere local irritant, but as a dynamic agent.
Nothing, however, can be more clearly demonstrated than is
this thesis by Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre, in the paper I have
already referred to . He first quotes nineteen observations to
show that, when Tartar emetic is used locally, pustular erup
tions are apt to occur on other parts of the body, especially
about the scrotum and labia, and the anus ; and this without
the possibility of the mechanical transference of the ointment.
He then cites five instances in which eruptions, closely
resembling those produced by Tartar emetic ointment (and
that also which characterises variola ), have appeared during
the internal administration of the drug.* Lastly, he adduces
evidence to prove that the local effect of the drug is not pro
duced till after a day or two, and sometimes does not appear
at all at the spot of application, but on some other part of
the body. Coupling these facts with the peculiar and specific
character of the eruption, and with the frequent occurrence
of similar pustules on the internal mucous surfaces under the
use of the drug, he comes fairly to the conclusion that Anti
mony is a specific and dynamic “ exanthematogenic ,” — its
characteristic eruption being pustular.
The precise form of cutaneous eruption to which Tartar
emetic corresponds is ecthyma. “The pustules," says Erasmus
Wilson, “ following the irritation of tartarized antimony are
ecthymatous.” A case of this disease cured by Tartar emetic
is given in the New Materia Medica. It is less suitable or
serviceable in impetigo,t save in one form of the disease, the
impetigo erysipelatodes. Here I have found it as cura
tive as it is homeopathic. But the deepest interest of Tartar
emetic in this sphere lies in its relation to variola . Not only
* Two additional cases of this kind are cited in the New Materia Medica,
and Tardieu recognises the fact.
+ But see cases by Dr. Dudgeon in the Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 311,
and xxix, 405 .
 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 107

does it cause a specific pustular eruption closely resembling

that of smallpox, but it has also the vomiting, the pustules
of mouth and throat, the viscid mucus clogging the air
passages, and the hypinosis of the blood, which no less
characterise the disease. Still further, the inoculation of the
lymph of Tartar emetic pustules appears to effect results
analogous to those of vaccination . The pustules produced
are precisely similar in appearance to those of cow -pock ; they
in their turn can excite fresh pustules by inoculation ; and
they are said (though this requires confirmation, and is
indeed hardly credible) to confer the same protection from
smallpos. Correspondingly with this close homeopathicity,
the power of Tartar emetic as a remedy for variola is very
great. Testimonies to its value are collected in the New
Materia Medica : it is said to be especially useful in cases
where the respiratory mucous membrane is much affected.
I myself have invariably used Tartar emetic (in the first
trituration ) as the medicine for smallpox, and have rarely
had occasion to substitute any other. I cannot say that it
cuts short the disease ; it is doubtful whether any medicine
can . But it seems to me to conduct the cases through in a
very satisfactory manner, decidedly mitigating all the inci
dental troubles, and leaving very little pitting behind.
I have now described the three great spheres of the action
of Tartar emetic , —the pneumogastric nerve, the respiratory
mucous membrane, and the skin . There are other forms of
disease in which it is often curative. One of these is delirium
tremens, where much gastric disorder of saburral kind is
present, as when beer has been the intoxicating drink em
ployed. Another is lumbago, and similar so - called “ muscu
lar rheumatisms," in which Dr. Bähr in Germany and Dr.
Lawrence Newton in this country have praised it highly .
It is also reckoned by Dr. Angell, in his excellent treatise On
Diseases of the Eye, a prime remedy for photophobia ; I have
recently had a good opportunity of verifying his recommen
dation . In connection with this it may be mentioned that
108 ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM .

Dr. Ringer recommends it, in doses of gr. 36 to 5,

4 87 in strumous

ophthalmia .
Ipecacuanha is the medicine most closely allied to Tartar
emetic. Then we have, as acting like it on the pneumogastric,
Digitalis, Lobelia, Tabacum , and Veratrum viride ; on the re
spiratory organs, Phosphorus; on the skin , Antimonium crudum
and Clematis.
The success of old-school practice with Tartar emetic in
croup, bronchitis, and pneumonia shows that these diseases do
not need very infinitesimal doses of the drug. In these, and
in variola, the homeopathic school has generally used
the second, rarely the third decimal potency. Higher
dilutions (12 — 15) seem to answer well in ædema pul.
monum .

The correspondences and divergences of the application of

Tartar emetic in the two schools respectively are surely very
instructive. The drug is known as an emetic, a depressant of
the circulation, and a specific remedy in acute pulmonary
affections. Ours is the direct opposite of the first of these
three uses : for we cure vomiting with the drug instead of
causing it. The second we reject utterly. The third we
claim for homeopathy, and, in the light of the law of simi
lars, define its range and precisionize its application.
 LECTURE VII .

APIS, ARGENTUM METALLICUM AND NITRICUM , ARNICA .

We will begin to -day's lecture with

Apis mellifica ..
This is the poison of the honey bee, and is (it need hardly
be said ) peculiar to homeopathic practice . It is prepared for
use in more than one way. A trituration of the whole bees ,
dried ; or a tincture prepared by macerating their hinder
parts, after killing them while in a state of excitement, have
been used , and seem to contain the virtues of the medicine .
But a better preparation would be a solution of the virus
itself in alcohol or glycerine. It can be obtained, as Dr.
Hering suggests, by seizing the bee by its wings and causing
it to eject its poison upon a piece of sugar, or by grasping the
sting of a stupefied bee with a small pair of nippers, and gra
dually drawing out the sting and poison bags together. A
Dew preparation is suggested in the British Homeopathic
Pharmacopeia, to which I refer you for it.
Apis has been proved, both in the trituration and in the
solution of the virus above mentioned, by the Central New
York State Homeopathic Society. The results, published in
its Transactions, appear in schema form in Metcalf's collection .
They are also published, incorporated with effects of bee
stings and with new symptoms obtained on the healthy or
observed on patients taking the drug, in Hering's Ameri
kanische Arzneiprufungen, and again in Allen's Encyclopædia.
110 APIS MELLIFICA .

Numerous clinical cases are appended to Metcalf's arrange

ment ; and others are to be read in Marcy and Peters, in the
eleventh and twelfth volumes of the British Journal of Homeo
pathy, and in the Bibliothèque Homeopathique for 1874-5 .
The medicine now to be discussed differs in important
respects from the substances we have been accustomed to
regard as drugs. We have to believe that the symptoms
known to result from the sting of a bee are also in some
degree produced when the virus of the insect, in a diluted
form , is taken into the stomach . In noting, moreover , the
homeopathic indications for the remedial use of the virus,
we shall depend much upon the phenomena of bee-stinging ;
and shall take it for granted that similar phenomena occur
ring in disease are properly treated by the internal adminis
tration of the poison. Such assumptions at one time raised
considerable difficulty, on the ground of the supposed inert
ness of animal poisons when introduced through the digestive
mucous membrane : and in previous editions of this work I
had to discuss the subject. It is now needless to do so ; for,
as Drs. Brunton and Fayrer state, * it has been clearly shown
that serpent -poison acts when introduced into the stomach,
or when applied to a mucous or serous membrane. “ The
idea ,” say they, “that it is only effective when injected
directly into the blood , is erroneous ; though it is, no doubt,
more certainly and rapidly fatal when it enters the blood
direct ."
Let us consider the local effects of a bee- sting. The part
rapidly swells up, becomes more or less hot and red, with a
tense pain, and often considerable burning, tingling, and itch
ing. This is the simplest and most characteristic form of the
pathogenetic influence of Apis. It is an acute edema, the
cellular tissue being more affected than the skin . Whenever
a similar condition occurs idiopathically, whether on cutaneous
or mucous surfaces, Apis will be found curative. Acute
* Trans. of Royal Society for Jan. 22, 1874, reported in Lond . Med .
Record, ii, 109. See also Monthly Hom . Rev., xvi, 673.
 APIS MELLIFICA . 111

cedema occurring on the skin is a form of erysipelas ; and in

this disease Apis is a prime remedy. It stands between
Belladonna and Rhus, not controlling intense cutaneous in
flammation like the former, or the tendency to form vesicles
like the latter, but acting most efficiently in its own sphere of
cedema. Then there is a species of sore throat in which Apis
is specific. There is no very great redness or pain as with
Belladonna, nor is the parenchyma of the tonsils inflamed as
when Baryta carbonica is the remedy ; but there is general
edema of the submucous cellular tissue covering the tonsils,
urula, soft palate, and even the posterior portion of the hard
palate. When you look at the throat it seems as if aa bee had
fiown in and stung the patient there. If the numerous cases
of angina cured by Apis which have been put on record be
studied, they will be found to have been of this character.
Such a sore throat is not uncommonly an extension of erysi
pelas, as the late Dr. Todd describes it in his Clinical Lectures.
It is often , also, the beginning of adema glottidis, in which
Apis is the great remedy. It proved curative of an instance
of this affection, where the cause was drinking water from a
kettle.* Such cases are commonly fatal.
There are two specific diseases in which the throat is often
affected in the way of acute edema, and to which Apis, thus
indicated, bears an important therapeutic relation . These
are diphtheria and scarlatina. Facts are accumulating which
point to Apis as a prime remedy in the former disease. Drs.
Baumann and V. Meyer in Germany, Kallenbach in Holland ,
ard Jahr in France, concur to esteem it the best anti-diph
theritic we have it and my own experience points in the same
direction. In the last case I had I found it remove every
thing but the coryza, which yielded to Kali bichromicum .
In scarlatina Apis is obviously indicated for the anginose
form, where there is more ædema than ulceration. But Apis
* Monthly Hom . Rev., xiii, 364.
+ See Brit. Journ . of Hom., xxviii, 613, 775.
Ibid ., p . 738.
.
112 APIS MELLIFICA .

has also the action on the kidneys and skin characteristic of

this poison. Mr. Nankivell noticed in a patient affected by it
that a patch of skin on the arm remained white amid the
surrounding redness, and was informed that this spot had
been a short time previously the seat of the inflammation
resulting from the sting of a bee. He and others have used
it here with success. It is especially indicated in irregular
and adynamic forms of the disease ; as when the eruption is
repelled, or does not come out well. A typical case of the
kind is given by Dr. Chepmell in his “ Hints.” Dr. Guernsey
says that the alternation of perspiration and dryness of the
skin is characteristic of it here.
Other forms of acute ædema are inflammations of the
tongue and of the labia pudendi ; in both of which Apis
has been found curative. Indeed, if this pathological condition
be borne in mind as the keynote of the medicine, it will
rarely be used in vain.
We have still remaining the burning, itching, and tingling
of our bee -sting, -features by no means common in idiopathic
edema. They rather point to cutaneous dysästhesiæ and
eruptions, into which, indeed, in the provers they are seen
developed. The exanthem induced generally resembles urti
caria , in which disorder Apis is our great remedy. It has also
cured cases of lichen and of erythema nodosum ; and is gene
rally indicated in skin affections not going on to destruction
of tissue, but accompanied with excessive itching, especially of
a burning and stinging character.
Urticaria , like erysipelas, may manifest itself internally .
Here also we have acute ædema, but without the tendency
to suppuration belonging to the erysipelatous form . The
distressing and sometimes even dangerous symptoms arising
from this cause have several times been successfully encoun
tered by Apis.*
In acute ædema, erysipelatous and urticarious, we have the
6
* See Erasmus Wilson on Diseases of the Skin , article “ Urticaria, " and
cases 14, 16 , 28 in Dr. Metcalf's paper.
 APIS MELLIFICA . 113

pathological condition most characteristic of Apis : and upon

this I am desirous of fixing your attention. But both prov .
ings and therapeutic records credit the medicine with a range
far wider than this, as will appear from what follows.
1. The mucous membranes are not influenced in their gene
tal extent by Apis : but at certain spots it manifests great
power. It inflames the conjunctiva : and has frequently
proved curative in catarrhal and scrofulous ophthalmia. It
is where the cornea is much involved that its most striking
curative results are seen . It causes hoarseness and dry
cough : and is often useful in subacute and chronic laryngo
tracheal irritation , of a mild type ( comp. Rumex crispus and
Carbo vegetabilis ). It irritates the stomach, and somewhat
the bowels ; it is one of the best remedies for diarrhea recur .
ring every morning, the motions greenish -yellow and painless
( comp. again with Rumex crispus). It is very decidedly irri.
tant to the kidneys and neck of the bladder (as Cantharis ).
Dr. Marcy recommends it in incipient Bright's disease, in
inflammation of the neck of the bladder, and in “ irritable
bladder."
2. Apis acts rather powerfully in the ovario-uterine sphere.
Few medicines cause so many ovarian symptoms : and it has
more than once provoked miscarriage when given to pregnant
women . It has proved curative in amenorrhæa, dysmenor
rhoea, and menorrhagia, when resulting from active congestion
of the ovaries : and even in chronic affections of the latter
organs. The presence of a " stinging " pain is said to indi
cate it here. I know of no certain evidence, however, to
Eustain the vague notion which seems to obtain of its power
of curing ovarian dropsy.
3. I come now to the important question , -what power has
Apis over dropsy, general and local ? It is credited with
almost unbounded curative virtues in this disease ; but I
think discrimination is needed . Its action on the kidneys is
enfficient to make it a most useful, because homoeopathic,
remedy in acute febrile dropsy from a chill, in post -scarlatinal
8
114 APIS MELLIFICA .

dropsy, in that of incipient Bright's disease, and in that which

sometimes appears in the later months of pregnancy and lays
the foundation of future puerperal convulsions. In all these
forms of dropsy Apis has been used successfully : its curative
action being generally announced by a great increase in the
secretion of urine. By the same influence on the kidneys, as
I suppose, it will sometimes remove for a time the ædema of
the lower extremities symptomatic of disease of the thoracic
organs : but this action is uncertain , and at best palliative and
temporary . Then there are the serous dropsies,—ascites,
hydrothorax, hydrocephalus. These may be mechanical, from
obstruction of the circulation ; as when ascites results from
cirrhosis of the liver. In such cases, I cannot conceive of
Apis dispersing the effusion ; nor do I see sufficient evidence
that it has ever done so. It is otherwise when the dropsy is
the unabsorbed effusion remaining after serous inflammation .
There seems little doubt but that Apis acts specifically upon
the serous membranes. I do not know that it has ever been
used in their acute inflammations : but in ascites and hydro
thorax remaining behind after peritonitis and pleurisy it has
over and over again proved curative, and there is some reason
to suppose that it has removed the effusion in cerebral menin
gitis (probably non -tubercular).
I have indicated many of the medicines which in particular
spheres of action correspond with that of Apis. Thus Can
tharis and Terebinthina in the urinary organs, Sabina in the
ovario -uterine system , Rumex in the morning diarrhoea and
laryngeal symptoms, and Euphrasia in the action on the con
junctiva closely resemble the present medicine. For the
cutaneous symptoms, Anacardium , Belladonna, Croton , Rhus,
and Urtica may be compared ;; and for the affections of the
serous membranes, Apocynum , Mercurius corrosivus, and
Bryonia . As a whole, the action of Apis more nearly resem
bles that of Arsenic than of any other drug.
The 3rd dec. dilution is that which I always employ in acute
ædema in all its forms. In dropsies, Dr. Marcy prefers the
 ARGENTUM METALLICUM . 115

lower dilutions, from the 3rd downwards ; in cutaneous affec

tions, from the 3rd upwards ; in irritation of the bladder he
says we ought never to go lower than the 6th. The most
striking cures of ophthalmia have been made with the higher
dilutions.

Of the preparations of Silver we use two, the pure metal

itself, and the nitrate.

Argentum metallicum .
The finest silver leaf was the form in which metallic silver
was proved by Hahnemann. The precipitated metal is allowed
as an alternative form by the British Homeopathic Pharma
copæia. Either is triturated for our use.
Metallic silver was proved, in the first trituration , by Hah .
nemann and seven others : the pathogenesis, containing 224
symptoms, appears in the fourth volume of the Reine Arznei
mittellehre. Some later provings by Dr. Huber, in the
potencies from 1 to 6, are recorded in the second volume of
the Esterreichische Zeitung, and amalgamated with Hahne
mann's by Allen .
Dr. Huber sums up his proving by suggesting that the
chief action of Argentum is on the articulations and their
component elements,-bones, cartilages, ligaments, & c. It
seems to produce arthralgia rather than arthritis ; and might
be serviceable in hysterical joints. Dr. Sharp writes : - “ a very
long -lasting and severe case of coxalgia in a young woman,
and another nearly similar affection of the knee, have been
cured by it in my hands.” It also causes diuresis ; and
as Hahnemann suggested — is occasionally useful in diabetes
(not mellitus indeed , but insipidus). Another sphere of its
action is the larynx. It has cured hoarseness and chronic
laryngitis.
We have yet to learn the influence of Argentum on the
uterus, as there were no women among the provers. But
Pereira's statement, that "in uterine diseases, especially when
216 ARGENTUM NITRICUM .

there are augmented discharges and great irritability, it has

been beneficial," suggests a specific action here ; and Teste
has related an interesting case of uterine cancer, in which the
relief afforded by the drug was so great that for a time a cure
seemed about to result.
Aurum , Platinum , and Selenium are analogues of Argentum ;
less so Zincum .
I know of no recorded experience from which to suggest the
dose. Hahnemann recommends the 2nd trituration.
Argentum nitricum .
This salt of silver is prepared in aqueous solution, and pre
served with the usual precautions. It is sometimes tritu
rated ; but the preparation must be uncertain .
Nitrate of silver only obtained a few symptoms in Hahne
mann's hands, the 15th dilution being employed. But it has
received an exhaustive proving from Dr. J. O. Müller, of
Vienna, the record of which was published in the second
volume of the Esterreichische Zeitung, and may be read in
Hempel's translation of Stapf's Additions. Four men and
two women took part in it, using both the crude drug and the
attenuations. Some physiological experiments with fractions
of a grain ( - ) are related by Krahmer in his monograph
on Silver,* and may be read in Frank ( iii, 389) and partially
in Hempel. The article in Allen's Encyclopedia adds to these
numerous symptoms from poisonings.
I would first speak of the local application of Nitrate of
silver. Most of you would probably be loth to lose the advan
tages of the practice, and would wish to know if Homeopathy
forbids its continuance. She certainly does not ; but, on the
contrary, claims it for herself. Let Trousseau be witness on
the point. “ Solutions of nitrate of silver," he says , “at
first applied to the pharynx and mucous lining of the mouth,
passed into every -day use in the treatment of inflammations of
* Das Silver als Arzneimittel betrachtet, von Dr. L. Kralmer. 1845.
+ Clinical Lectures (New Syd. Soc.), ii, 19.
 ARGENTUM NITRICUM . 117

the mucous membrane of the nose, eyes, urethra, vagina, and

even of the intestines. . . It was soon perceived that the
primary effect of this and similar agents was analogous to
that produced by inflammation, and it was easy to understand
that inflammation artificially induced in tissues already the
seat of inflammation led to a cure of the original inflamma
tory attack . When this view was once acquired , there flowed
from it the great therapeutical principle of substitution, which ,
at present, reigns supreme in medical practice.” If we
needed to know what Trousseau meant by “ substitution , ” we
should find it in what he says in his Materia Medica : - " if
now arsenic is employed ” in inflammations “ locally in very
small proportions, il agit homoeopathiquement, c'est-a -dire, sub
stitutivement."
Nevertheless, it is rarely that the disciple of Hahnemann
has to avail himself of such medication. To direct his
“ substitutive ” agents to the parts affected, he uses the
elective affinities of drugs. He thus has a far wider range ,
and also a more radical kind of operation. Local cure
of inflammation can be satisfactory only when the disease is.
of local origin. If, as so often happens, the inflammation is
>

but an expression of blood changes farther back, it is poor

practice to blight the efflorescence while root and stem are
untouched . A simile which acts from without can do this:
only. But one which acts from within will, if it be a true
one, track the whole course of the disease, and “ cover it
from its first origin to its ultimate manifestation : for after a
like manner itself is wont to behave. Hence, if it cures , it
will do so thoroughly.
If, therefore, a beginner in homeopathy should ask me
about the local use of Nitrate of silver, I should reply, first of
all, that homeopathy is affirmative, not negative. She for
bids nothing — not even bleeding and blistering : she ousts
them merely by curing without their aid. So, by all means ,
if you have an ulcer or a local inflammation which you cannot
cure by specific internal medication, apply your lunar caustic.
118 ARGENTUM NITRICUM .

But try the internal treatment first. I venture to predict

that, as that becomes perfected , the local treatment will cease
to be required ; and the porte-caustique will take its place
with the phlebotomy lancet among the disused instruments of
torture .
We turn now to the internal use of our drug. What is
generally known of it is that it inflames the gastro-intestinal
canal, causing (in Pereira's words) “ if the dose be too large,
gastrodynia, sometimes nausea and vomiting, and occasion
ally purging ; ” and that, when absorbed, it disorders the
nervous centres, producing affections of a convulsive and para
lytic character. Its uses are according to the same authority
—to allay chronic vomiting and relieve gastrodynia, while it
occasionally displays curative powers in epilepsy and chorea .
It is hardly necessary to argue that the virtues of the salt
depend upon the operation of the law of similars.
But homeopathy requires more precision than this ; and we
must look closer at both the irritant and the neurotic pheno
mena.
As regards the former,—locally the nitrate may, of
course, inflame and even ulcerate the whole alimentary canal.
There is no evidence, however, of its elective affinity for any
other parts of the tract than the mouth and throat, and the
duodenum, which last was found inflamed in Orfila's dogs
when the salt was injected into the veins. In provers the
throat looks dark red, and feels dry, and as if a splinter or
ulcer were there ; the tongue is sore, and the papillæ elevated .
Tender and easily bleeding (but neither painful nor swollen )
gums have been observed in patients under its influence, and
in dogs treated by Krahmer like Orfila's. Other mucous
membranes feel its influence, especially that of the eye. Dr.
Müller himself had, from the second decimal trituration, a
sharp attack of conjunctivitis, most severe in the canthi and
carunculæ ; there was even an approach to chemosis. Symp
toms of urethritis were experienced by the same prover : the
canal was swollen , hard, and knotty to the touch , and the
right testicle was enlarged and hard .
 ARGENTUM NITRICUM . 119

Then as to the nervous centres and nerves. “Both convul.

sions and paralysis are present, ” writes Dr. H. C. Wood," in
argyria, or silver-poisoning . ” The convulsions he describes
as reflex, excited by the least peripheral irritation ; and as
persisting after the complete abolition of voluntary move
ments. The paralysis is general, and is especially seen in the
pulmonary branches of the vagi — death ensuing from asphyxia,
with the same condition of the lungs as when their nerves are
divided . In the provers the neurotic effect of the drug was
manifest in headache deep in the substance of the brain, with
low spirits ; vertigo ; want of mental power ; restless, dream
ful sleep ; weakness of the spine, with pain at the small of the
back ; and very marked debility of the lower extremities,
almost approaching to paraplegia. In Dr. Müller this last
was accompanied with emaciation . Krahmer developed in
himself a long-lasting infra -orbital neuralgia ; but as this
succeeded to much gastric weakness and heartburn, it was
probably sympathetic only.
But we have not yet exhausted the pathogenetic power of
Nitrate of Silver. Dr. Bogolowsky, of Moscow , has recently
experimented with it largely in rabbits, to ascertain its deeper
and more chronic effects . * From these it appears that the
salt has a direct and primary influence on the red corpuscles
of the blood , causing their colouring matter to escape into the
plasma, and so leading at first to ecchymosis and effusions,
and later to interference with oxidation and ultimate chlorosis.
As a result of the deficient nutrition ( so he thinks) there
occurs catarrh of the mucous membranes generally, and
degeneration - rather of a granular than a fatty kindof the
renal and hepatic cells, and of the muscles, including the
heart. There is also found a universal venous blood -stasis.
The therapeutic virtues of Argentum nitricum may be
ranged in the same three categories.
1. Its previous repute in affections of the stomach seems
See Virchow's Archiv, vi, 4 , 1869 ; and Practitioner, iii, 65.
120 ARGENTUM NITRICUM .

well sustained in the present day, and some of it is echoed

from the homeopathic ranks. In chronic inflammatory states
of the organ its action must be local, and crude doses are
required . But the marked gastric sufferings of the provers
seem to show that the drug affects the nervous supply of the
viscus, and may - in doses too small for local effect - modify
its functional derangements. So Dr. Bayes speaks highly of
its power over what he calls “ irritative flatulent cardialgia ,"
where the wind comes away easily, rushing upwards through
the mouth .** Dr. Holland communicates two excellent cases
of cure by it of chronic dyspepsia disordering the heart's
action.t This was a condition strikingly developed in
Krahmer's provings. His chief trouble was heartburn ;
and the excess of acid on which this symptom usually
depends was the prominent feature of two cases of gastro
dynia recorded by Mr. Harmar Smith as cured by the
Nitrate.
Ever since the provings showed the specific influence of
Argentum nitricum over the conjunctiva, we have used it
internally - whether externally also or not - in inflammations
of this mucous membrane. Dr. Angell commends it “ in
affections of the lining membrane of the lids, and of the
lachrymal duct and sac, when there is an abundant discharge
of pus." Dr. Dudgeon introduced its use in the treatment
of ophthalmia neonatorum ; and I for one have been so
satisfied therewith that I have never had to resort to any
external measures beyond those needed for cleanliness. Of a
piece with this is Dr. Meyhoffer's praise of its action - inter
nally and by spray - in tuberculous laryngitis.
2. The anti- epileptic virtues of this salt have yet to be
defined . They are undoubted, though only occasionally seen .
Nor are large doses always required. A case of forty years'
standing is cited by Hempel, in which the cure was effected by
swallowing a silver coin which was ejected twenty months later
* Brit. Journ . ofHom ., xxx, 143. + Ibid ., xxxii, 85.
I Ibid ., xxv, 504. § Ibid ., vi, 216.
 ARGENTUM NITRICUM . 121

but little diminished in size. The only contribution from the

homoeopathic school is that of Dr. Gray, of New York , who
asserts that epilepsies originating in the brain may be promptly
and durably cured by a few small doses, while those proceeding
from abdominal irritation can be barely palliated by large quan
tities. In the paralytic sphere, considerable interest attaches
to the medicine on account of its having been strongly recom
mended of late in locomotor ataxy. Some cases by Wunderlich
and others may be read in the twenty -first volume of the British
Journal of Homoeopathy, in which there appears no doubt of
the nature of the disease, nor of its cure or great mitigation by
the use of the Nitrate of Silver. Trousseau, however, states.
that he bas been disappointed in it. Dr. Bazire gave it in
six cases ; a very marked improvement took place in one, and
a less marked one in another, but no appreciable result in
other instances. Topinard, also, found an entire failure in
twelve cases out of seventeen :: and in three only of the
remaining five was the improvement decided. It is certain ,
therefore, that Nitrate of Silver is no specific remedy against
locomotor ataxy as such ; nor is it homeopathic thereto, as
the proving points to a true paralysis of the legs as the
effect of the drug, rather than a disorder of movements with
retention of energy. In simple paraplegia from exhaustion I
have more than once found it of signal service ; and it has.
cured diphtheritic paralysis. In dull chronic headaches of
literary and business men Argentum nitricum is much com-
mended . Dr. Guernsey indicates it in giddiness on the least
mental or bodily exertion .
3. But the most interesting and important sphere of our
medicine is that in which its influence on the blood and on
nutrition is brought to bear. Not long before Dr. Bogolowsky
published his results Dr. von Grauvogl's Lehrbuch der
Homöopathie had appeared in Germany. This able work is.
now , by the labours of Dr. Shipman, of Chicago, accessible to
us in an English dress. The author considers that there are
three principal “ morbid constitutions;” that one of these is
122 ARNICA MONTANA .

the carbo -nitrogenous, in which the oxidation of the blood is

obstructed , giving rise to accumulation of carbon and
nitrogen in excess : and that the chief remedy for this condi
tion is Nitrate of Silver. Whatever may be thought of his
pathological theory, the cases he gives amply bear out his
commendation of the remedyT ; and the experiments of Dr.
Bogolowsky supply the missing link by demonstrating its
homeopathicity. We now have a true simile for chlorosis and
defective oxidation of the system ; and from what I have myself
seen I believe that the medicine will fully answer expectation
in this direction .
Argentum nitricum has obvious points of analogy with
Arsenic and Mercury ; with Phosphorus ; and with Hydro
cyanic acid .
The potencies from the third decimal to the third centesimal
have been those chiefly employed ; but v. Grauvogl gives
several drops of the first per dose .
I have last to speak of
Arnica montana .
The homeopathic tincture is prepared from the entire fresh
plant, or from the root, recent or dried .
Arnica has been well proved. Hahnemann supplies a
pathogenesis of it in the first volume of the Reine Arznei
mittellehre, to which nine persons besides himself have contri
buted . It contains 638 symptoms, of which 47 are taken from
authors, and are chiefly collateral or excessive effects of the
drug when given to patients. Then we have the provings of
Jörg and his fifteen or more pupils. These were made, some
times with an infusion of the flowers, sometimes with a tincture
of the root. Last come the experiments of Schneller and
other members of the Vienna Proving Society, of which an
account is given in the sixth volume of the British Journal of
Homeopathy. Dr. Allen unites the symptoms from all these
sources in his Encyclopædia.
Of the physiological effects elicited in these provings I
 ARNICA MONTANA . 123

shall best speak as I discuss the therapeutical powers of the

drug. Of these let us take the best known,-its remedial
action in mechanical injuries.
1. This property of Arnica has come to be in this country
at least ) associated with homeopathy. But the method of
Hahnemann cannot take credit for its discovery. He himself
tells us, in the preface to his proving, that it had become
known to the “common man,” and the plant named “ Fall
kraut” (plant for falls ) accordingly ; and that, two hundred
years ago , a physician ( Fehr) communicated this discovery of
domestic practice to the profession, who then named the herb
Panacea lapsorum . The only credit homeopathy can claim
in connection with Arnica is that she has kept the tradition
alive. Satisfied with Hahnemann's inference from his provings,
that “ all the symptoms attending violent contusions and
tearing of the fibres are analogically produced by Arnica in the
healthy organism ,” she has adopted the popular remedy into
her list of similars. With her adherents to this day Arnica
is to an injury what Aconite is to a chill ; and the most grati
fying results are continually being obtained from it. In
contrast, it may be mentioned that Ringer and H. C. Wood
omit Arnica altogether ; while Dr. Phillips “considers it a
great pity that it has not ( 1874 ) come into more general use
in this direction .
I have said that Arnica is to an injury what Aconite is to a
chill : that is, it will almost infallibly obviate the ill-effects, if
given before organic mischief has been set up. It becomes thus
the great remedy to be administered in all cases of concussion,
sprain , or other suffering from violence. It removes, as
Hahnemann says, “the pernicious consequences which often
attend falls, contusions, blows, thrusts, straining, twisting or
tearing the solid parts of our organism ." But, unlike Aconite,
it will follow up the cause to many of the changes it effects,
even when of long standing and profound character. Such
are those instanced by Dr. Bayes in his interesting article on
the drug, viz.: the chronic muscular stiffness - called rheu
124 ARNICA MONTANA .

matism - of old labourers, and the cardiac hypertrophy of

boating men. Mr. Nankivell has illustrated the same thing
by some of the thoracic affections of the Cornish miners.*
The tissue affected in all these instances is the muscular ;
and upon this Arnica specially acts. It is above all things a
myotic. It thus becomes the main remedy for those numerous
affections which Dr. Inman bas so well described under the
term myalgia. Over- exertion of healthy muscles, or the normal
use of weak muscles, will bring on these pains : and Arnica
will almost infallibly relieve them. As their occurrence is
very common , it is a medicine in daily use . I need only
specify two of them . One is the form of pleurodynia known
as spurious pleurisy. This may readily be induced by over
exertion , as in the following case reported by Dr. Inman .
“ A párty of gentlemen on a severe pedestrian excursion were
all tired on the first day, and that was all ; on the second day
some began to have frequent stitches in the side, could not
sleep on the side, but only on the back ; on the third day the
pains in the side were terribly increased, with so much tender
ness that they could not bear the weight of the clothes .” In
this not uncommon form of pleurodynia Arnica gives rapid
relief. It must be distinguished from the muscular rheuma
tism so called , which yields much more satisfactorily to Bryonia.
or Actæa racemosa . Another myalgia which I would specify
is one of the forms of pain after food. The pain comes on
immediately, even during the act of swallowing ; the patients
are weak, and of lax fibre ; and they often have or have had
myalgiæ elsewhere . Here too Arnica is an admirable remedy.
In this connexion I would recommend the perusal of an
excellent paper by Dr. Madden on “ Myalgia," in the twenty
fifth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. He, too ,
places Arnica first among the anti-myalgics ; and agrees with
Dr. Bayes in finding heart affections consequent on over
exertion amenable to its use. I may also mention that

* Brit. Journ , of Hom ., xxiii, 177.

 ARNICA MONTANA . 125

Dr. von Grauvogl praises it highly for the " clergyman's sore
throat ;” and that I myself have cured with it a chronic
tenesmus of the bladder produced by frequent long retentions
necessitated by the patient's business.
But, though Arnica affects the muscles chiefly, we must
not limit its influence to these. It will check the hæmor
rbages of mechanical violence ; quiet the nervous startings of
a fractured limb ; and obviate the danger of re -action in
concussion of the brain and sudden apoplectic extravasation .
It seems, moreover, to cover the whole remote effects of an
injury. Give it to one whose frame cannot forget the shock
of a far -back railway accident; and you and he will be alike
delighted with the effect.
In external injuries Arnica may be used locally as well as
inwardly ; and will give speedy relief to pain , while pro
moting the restoration of the bruised part to its normal
condition . Any one who has tried it when his finger has
been jammed in a door will bear witness to the statement. *
How it effects this is a difficult question. Dr. Garrod has
shown that it has no absorbent ” power over mere san
guineous effusion, such as dry -cupping can produce. Violence
seems always needed to call forth its remedial powers ; but
then they are indubitable.
2. The next most familiar action of Arnica is that which it
exerts on the skin . There is first an eruption which in some
susceptible persons results from its external application. The
very scent of it is sometimes enough ; and I have even known
the eruption follow the internal use of the first dilution . It
consists of a number of very fine vesicles on an erythematous
base, with much heat and itching. Dr. Phillips thinks that
an aqueous infusion of the plant, by excluding the arnicine
and etherial oil (which are insoluble in water), is preferable to
a lotion made from the tincture for external application, as
being non -irritating.
The Arnica -erysipelas is rarely met with as an idiopathic
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xviii , 132.
126 ARNICA MONTANA .

affection, and hence the drug is little used in this complaint.

But Hahnemann points out the resemblance of another of its
cutaneous effects to a boil ; and recommends it as preventive
and curative in that complaint. Teste cured with it an angina
which seemed to result from the retrocession of boils, and
v. Grauvogl states that repeated doses will often abort a
carbuncle.
3. Less known is the action of Arnica on the nervous
tissue. It is reputed in Germany as a stimulant to the brain
and spinal cord ; and has cured in Collin's hands* many
cases of amaurosis and paralysis. Improvement was gene
rally preceded by peculiar sensations in the affected parts, as
tingling and electric shocks. The provers suffered from
congestive vertigo and headache ; and from pains down the
spine. Van der Kolk (according to Phillips) found Arnica
“ invaluable in that condition of idiopathic uræmia where, the
first excitement having diminished, the head nevertheless
remains hot, and where a tendency to imbecility or to para
lysis is shown . ” Hahnemann cured aa chronic vertigo with it.
4. Arnica causes, according to both Jörg and Habnemann,
violent urging to stool, with scanty and natural fæces, as if
the muscular coat only of the bowel was excited. This
suggests the homeopathicity of its action in dysentery, for
which it has long been in repute — Stoll calling it a specific
anti - dysenteric. Hahnemann recommended it here himself :
but it had almost dropped out of use until it was revived in
America by a curious accident, and has been highly esteemed
there since . Tormina and tenesmus would especially call
for it. +
5. Another property ascribed to Arnica by the older
* Obs. circa Morbos, iv and v.
+ S. 261 of Hahnemann's pathogenesis (“ purulent and bloody stool " )
must not be regarded as proving the homeopathicity of Arnica to dysen
tery. It occurred in a child to whom Arnica was being given for a fall
from aa height. The reporter regarded it as a sign of internal contusion or
extravasation ,
 ARNICA MONTANA . 127

writers was that of checking suppuration . Dr. v. Grauvogl

entirely confirms this from his own experience with small
doses.
Arnica has yet some minor actions, which may be briefly
mentioned . It causes two marked sensations in the stomach :
a sense of repletion, and a feeling of canine hunger with
(nevertheless ) no appetite for food. It is recommended in
whooping -cough, when children begin to cry as soon as they
feel the cough coming on.
I must notice, before leaving Arnica, Dr. Phillips' singular
theory about the cause of its activity. Tri-methylamine
( sometimes called " propylamine " ) has been obtained from
it, as from a dozen other substances ; and must be regarded
(he thinks ) as its active ingredient. But there is no analogy
between the action of the two - as there is, e.g. , between
Belladonna and Atropine, between Aconite and Aconitine.
Arica has never cured true rheumatism : Dr. Fuller, whom
Phillips cites, used it only as a nervine stimulant therein . On
the other hand, if Dr. Phillips tries to get the effects of
Arnica in shakes and bruises from tri-methylamine, he will
be grievously disappointed .
In its antidotal power against mechanical violence Arnica
is almost unique, finding only a point of contact here and
there with Rhus and Hypericum . In its action on the
muscles Bryonia and Actæa resemble it somewhat ; as a
cutaneous irritant it is allied again to Rhus and to Croton .
In all recent affections Arnica may be given in small or
fractional doses of the mother tincture. But I must agree
with Dr. Bayes, that if we desire to get good from it in the
remote effects of injury, we must ascend to the region of
infinitesimals .
 LECTURE VIII.

ARSENIC .

We have to -day to gird up our loins, and summon all our

strength , that we may master the greatest of medicines,
because the greatest of poisons,

Arsenicum .
By this name a homoeopathist means Arsenious acid, the
Arsenicum album of the old nomenclature. This salt
is triturated up to the 3rd decimal attenuation , and then
prepared by solution :: or this potency may be made at once
by boiling.
The homeopathic literature of Arsenic is very extensive,
and abounds in both original and collected material. Hahne
mann published a proving of it in the second volume of the
Materia Medica Pura , and subsequently another in the
second edition of the Chronic Diseases. The former, in its
latest shape (1833) , consists of 1079 symptoms, of which
697 are from Hahnemann himself and seven fellow - observers,
and 382 are cited from authors. Many of these last belong
to records of poisoning with Arsenious acid itself, or with
other preparations of the drug — as orpiment, realgar, and
cobalt . But a good many are vitiated by having been
observed in sufferers from intermittents treated by the drug,
where it is very difficult to decide how much is ague and how
much Arsenic . The pathogenesis in the Chronic Diseases
(1839) contains 202 additional symptoms, of which 79 are
from a case of poisoning involving a whole family (Kaiser's ),
 ARSENICUI . 129

and the rest from observations made on patients taking globules

of the 30th by Hahnemann himself and by Hering. Several
studies and supplementings of Hahnemann's pathogenesis of
Arsenic have been made. Dr. Wurmb has contributed one
ef the former, which may be read in English in the third and
fourth volumes of the British Journal of Homeopathy. Dr.
Black has given us a most valuable arrrangement of the drug
in the first part of the Hahnemann Materia Medica, where its
symptomatology is revised and augmented, and illustrated by
clinical comments . Dr. Roth has criticised Hahnemann's
toxicological material, and incorporated what he considers
trustworthy in it with all that has since appeared in a scheme
of the drug which contains 1056 symptoms. * The matter
from all these sources, with a more complete revision and
illumination of Hahnemann's cited symptoms, is embodied in
the article on Arsenic in Allen's Encyclopædia , where the list
has swelled to 2872. But, next to Hahnemann himself, the
most eminent and fruitful worker in the field of arsenical
action has been Dr. Imbert -Gourbeyre, professor in the
medical school of Clermont -Ferrand. His numerous writings
on the subject - appearing during the last twenty years in the
Gazette Médicale de Paris, the Moniteur des Hôpitaux, L'Art
Midical, and other journals — I shall cite as I come to the
several points of which they treat.
It has been a matter of much consideration with me how I
should best present this abundant material to your notice . In
former editions I had attempted a brief but pretty complete
sketch of the physiological action of the drug, and had then
considered its therapeutic powers in corresponding categories.
I have determined here to treat the subject from a more
distinctly clinical point of view, and to connect more closely
the pathogenetic and curative actions. We shall consider
Arsenic in the sphere of fevers, of inflammations, and of
neuroses ; concluding with some miscellaneous and general
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xx .
9
130 ARSENICUM .

observations. My aim will be to supply information relative

to the experience gained with it in the homeopathic school ;
and to throw light upon the question of its modus operandi in
the various disorders for which it is in repute.
I. The virtues of Arsenic in ague are well known ; and in
the school of Hahnemann it is accounted the most potent
remedy for febrile conditions of the typhoid type. I shall
characterise its action here more precisely as I proceed : let us
first inquire what relation its physiological effects bear to the
conditions in question .
Dr. Imbert -Gourbeyre has examined this point in an essay
“ On the Febrigenic Power of Arsenic,'' * and demonstrates
that fever is among the most constant and characteristic
effects of the poison. It is obvious, however, that in the
great majority of the observations he cites it was symptomatic
of the gastro -enteric irritation set up, rather than a primary
effect. When thus occurring, it is of the hectic type, often
having marked evening exacerbations ; sometimes chill and
heat, with thirst and headache, recur periodically, in somewhat
irregular rotation. This is the condition set up in chronic
arsenical poisoning, as seen ( for instance ) in the victims of the
Aqua Toffana of old.
But some of the evidence adduced by our author, and other
facts elsewhere obtainable, show that Arsenic can cause fever
without local irritation . Of this kind is the observation of
Dr. v. Grauvogl, who, after some days' use of the 15th attenua
tion, experienced nothing but an insatiable thirst. From the
5th potency he felt great languor and sleeplessness in addition to
the thirst ; and it was not until, some weeks after, he descended
to the 3rd decimal, that symptoms of the stomach and bowels
showed themselves. Then Hahnemann remarked (1796 ) + - " I
have myself ascertained that Arsenic has a great tendency to
excite that spasm in the blood - vessels and the shock in the
nervous system we call the febrile rigor. If it be given in a
* L'Art Médical, 1865 ; and Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv , 72.
† Lesser Writings (tr. by Dudgeon), p. 336.
 ARSENICUM . 131

pretty large dose (one sixth or one fifth of a grain) to an

adult, this rigor becomes very evident.” It affects the vaso
motor nerves as we have seen that Aconite does. But the
subsequent phenomena are very different in the two drugs.
With Aconite a brief febrile reaction of synochal type occurs,
and then all ends with perspiration. But from Arsenic we have
either a repetition of the chills at intervals, or a long -lasting
fever with typhoid symptoms. Of the former Hahnemann
speaks : — “ It possesses,” he says (loc.cit.), " the power, observed
-

by me, of exciting a daily recurring, though always weaker

paroxysm , even although its use be discontinued.” Thus it
may set up an affection undistinguishable from ague, of which
instances have been recorded by Boudin, Delaharpe, Imbert
Gourbeyre, and Dudgeon . * Of the typhoid condition often
set up in protracted arsenical poisoning an exquisite example
is afforded by one of Orfila's cases. From the eighteenth to
the twenty -third day, it is said, “ his appearance resembles
that of a patient labouring under typhus.” By others, more
over (as Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre shows) , poisoning by Arsenic
has been compared to the course of low fever ; and once it
has been mistaken for it. Dr. Hausmann has also shown, in
an essay on the subject in the Esterreich . Zeitschrift (1845) ,
that the intestinal lesions of typhoid have often found their
analogues in the autopsies of persons perishing from the
effects of Arsenic.
It is thus evident that (as Boudin admits) Arsenic is
homeopathic to the ague it undoubtedly cures ; and that,
upon the principle of similarity, it ought to be useful in
typhus and enteric fevers. It is indeed so. My own experi
ence would lead me to lay it down as a canon that what
Aconite is to simple fever, that Arsenic is to its malignant
form . Whenever the well-known " typhoid ” symptoms
occur - especially the dry tongue and the (often involuntary )
diarrhæa - whether in continued fevers, in the exanthemata, as
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xx, 204.
132 ARSENICUM .

symptomatic of mortification, or as results of blood - poisoning,

my advice is to put in your Arsenic, and use it freely and
persistently. I have seen many an apparently desperate case
cured by it. Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre's paper will show that
this canon obtains general acceptance in the homeopathic
school, and is not without confirmation elsewhere. Fleisch
mann relied upon Arsenic almost exclusively in the treatment
of typhoid at his hospital. Dr. v. Grauvogl has every confid.
ence in it in pyæmia .
The irritative fever of Arsenic suggests its use in hectic
conditions such as accompany tuberculosis, and chronic
mischief in the lungs or intestines. We have always made
much use of it in the febrile marasmus of children ( usually
from mesenteric disease) and in phthisis. Recently it has
been much commended in the latter disease, especially as
diminishing the hectic. Dr. Ringer confirms the statement
that it will reduce the temperature in tuberculosis ; and
states that coincidently the symptoms are relieved, and even
-in some cases - apparent cure effected.
As regards ague, Boudin's doses were often as Hahne
mannian as his theory of the modus operandi, for he has
succeeded in curing chronic cases with a single milligramme.
Arsenic has, moreover, the highest repute as an anti
intermittent among homeopathists, and in quite infinitesi
mal doses. Drs. Wurmb and Caspar, from their experience
in the Leopoldstadt Hospital at Vienna, place it first among
the remedies for chronic agues (it is rarely indicated when
they are recent) . The special indications for it they epitomise
thus : - " one stage absent ; heat burning; rapid prostration ;
torpid weakness : dropsical swellings ; cachexia ; abuse of
Quinine.” But they add—“ it will often cure when other
remedies selected with the greatest care have failed.” They
were at this time using the 15th dilution exclusively in their
wards . * Dr. Bähr praises the same potency as sovereign in
malarial cachexia ; but in recent cases prefers the first three
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., vols, xii and xiii.
 ARSENICUM . 133

triturations. Of these, besides the ordinary symptomatic

indications of the drug, he says— “ Arsenicum is indicated
the more specifically the cleaner the tongue remains, the more
rapidly the strength is exhausted by a single paroxysm, and
the sooner the characteristic sallow pallor makes its appeare
ance ."
But before leaving this part of our subject, I must speak
of the action of Arsenic in cholera. I think I shall carry
most pathologists with me at the present day, in maintaining
(as I have long ago done) * that Asiatic cholera is essentially
a pernicious malarial fever, in which the poison exhausts
its influence in a single paroxysm . We have already seen
Arsenic causing the primary chill and the consecutive fever
of this malady ; and we shall hereafter find the cramps, the
vomiting and purging, and the suppression of urine repro
duced in its pathogenesis. So complete is the resemblance
that Dr. H. C. Wood can truly say that " arsenical poisoning
has been mistaken for cholera, not only in life, but also after
death, on the post -mortem table.” He is probably referring
in these last words to a case reported by Professor Virchow ,
in volume xlvii of his Archiv.f The very fungi described by
Klob and others as peculiar to cholera were present in the
rice-water fluid with which the intestines were filled ; and
the condition of the mucous membranes was anatomically
identical . The phenomena, moreover, which sometimes occur
in arsenical poisoning, where the patient dies in a few hours
in collapse, without symptoms of gastro -enteric irritation
sidération , as the French call it - have been compared by
many observers to the way in which cholera occasionally
invades the system .
It is true that this is not always so ; and that the vomiting
and purging of arsenical poisoning usually depend on
gastro -enteritis, which is absent in cholera. Hence the
minute symptomatology of the disease does not altogether
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 485 .
+ See Ibid ., xxviii, 202.
134 ARSENICUM .

correspond with that accepted as characteristic of the drug.

It was probably for this reason that Hahnemann , on first
hearing an account of cholera when it invaded Europe in
1830 , in naming the drugs most likely from their homæo.
pathicity to be its antidotes, specified Camphor, Veratrum ,
and Cuprum , but omitted Arsenic. Further knowledge of
the disease has shown that the features in which there is a
true similarity are those of most importance ; and Arsenic
has accordingly been added to the three Hahnemannian
medicines by those who care more for real lesions than for
symptomatic minutiæ . With such it has become the sheet
anchor in the most desperate cases. In the epidemic of
1849, Dr. Russell at Edinburgh and Dr. Drysdale at Liver
pool concurred in giving to Arsenic the chief place in the
treatment of cholera, when the time for arresting it with
Camphor had gone by ; and I believe this to be the general
experience of homeopathists.
II. I come now to the place of Arsenic in the treatment of
inflammations. Here its general homeopathicity, at least,
is evident ; for no more characteristically irritant poison
is known . It is only necessary on this head to inquire if
the similarity extend to the seat and kind of the inflam
matory action .
1. Let us first take the mucous membranes. To this
tissue Arsenic may fairly be called a specific irritant ; as it
affects it in some measure wherever found, and however the
poison is introduced into the system. The character of the
inflammation here produced is not (as with Tartar emetic)
muco-purulent, but the membrane is dry, or exudes aa thin
ichorous discharge ; and the further progress of the mischief
is towards ulceration rather than suppuration. After this
manner the alimentary canal is affected throughout, but
more especially the mouth, throat, stomach, duodenum , and
rectum . The inflammation is severe, and causes vomiting,
diarrhæa, and dysentery ; aphthæ in the mouth ; ulceration
of the stomach and intestine ; and even gangrene at the anus.
 ARSENICUM . 135

On the respiratory tract the influence of Arsenic is less

virulent, save on the uppermost portion ; but the whole extent
is affected , as shown by post -mortem redness, and cough and
other symptoms of irritation during life. The arsenical con
junctivitis, which is as well known as the mercurial stoma
titis, belongs to this category ; and there is also an arsenical
coryza — not merely in those living in rooms papered with it
(where it is constant, but might be a local effect merely ), but
also (as Dr. Imbert -Gourbeyre has shown ) from its internal
administration,, even in infinitesimal doses. The genito
urinary mucous membrane is inflamed throughout, even - as
in one case of Christison's—inside the uterus and Fallopian
tubes ; in the penis, scrotum, and vulva (as in the anus)
gangrene not unfrequently takes place. This last pheno
menon is one of those specially studied by Dr. Imbert
Gourbeyre .*
These are the pathogenetic facts ; and now let us turn to
those of therapeutics. If similia similibus were absurd ; if the
presence of inflammation were, according to the old view, a
contra -indication for an irritant, Arsenic ought to be utterly
eschewed in gastritis and enteritis. Yet it is not so. Mr.
Hunt tells us that when his patients with cutaneous disease
had also chronic irritations of the alimentary canal, the
Arsenic he gave them rather benefited these than otherwise.
Dr. Thorowgood writes in the Practitioner to extol the medi
cine in " Irritative Dyspepsia ” (v . 21 ) ; and Dr. Ringer,
supporting this recommendation , adds the morning vomiting
of drunkards, chronic ulcer of the stomach, and several other
analogous affections, in all of which he says " it allays pain
and checks vomiting." These gentlemen have but borrowed a
remedy traditional in the homeopathic school. There are
indeed few inflammatory diseases of the alimentary canal in
which Arsenic is not of great service, though in some it is
eclipsed by other remedies. Thus : in the mouth and throat
Mercury, Nitric and Muriatic Acid, Kali chloricum, and
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 77.
 136 ARSENICUM .

Belladonna supersede it on ordinary occasions. But in can

crum oris, in severe forms of aphthæ, and generally in malig
nant inflammations and phagedænic ulcerations (non -syphi
litic) of these parts, Arsenic has no rival. In gastritis, acute
and chronic, and in duodenitis, it is the chief remedy ; and so
in all dyspepsiæ resulting therefrom . In ulcer of the
stomach and intestines it yields the palm to Kali bichro
micum, and also in the one to Uranium nitricum, and in the
other to Mercurius corrosivus ; which last, moreover, is
superior to it in dysentery, save where the rectum is most
affected and where there is much prostration. As the
purging caused by it depends upon intestinal inflammation ,
it is not homeopathic to simple “ functional” diarrhæa,
however severe . But in most cases of chronic diarrhea,
where there is generally some disorganization, Arsenic is a
glorious remedy.
Arsenic holds an important place in the treatment of the
disorders of the upper portion of the respiratory mucous
membrane. Here, too, we have the support of Dr. Ringer,
who makes some interesting remarks on a variety of forms of
paroxysmal coryza , sometimes running into bronchitis, in
which he finds the medicine very useful. The sneezing and
wheezing of these affections ally them to hay -fever and
-asthma ; though in the latter - probably because of the local
presence of the specific irritant - remedies do not avail
much . Nevertheless, Arsenic has often gained much credit
in its treatment. * Dr. Ringer does not mention influenza.
This, like cholera, is an epidemic disease characterised by
vaso -motor disturbance, prostration, and copious flux. To the
typical form of this malady Arsenic precisely corresponds ;
and in my hands has always proved rapidly curative of it,
unquestionably cutting short its progress. In sporadie
coryzas approaching this type it is no less valuable. Here,
too, I must speak of its use in ophthalmia . In simple
chronic conjunctivitis I myself place great reliance upon it ;
* See Watson's Practice of Physic, I.
 ARSENICUM . 137

and in strumous ophthalmia my experience coincides with

that of many others that it will often cure obstinate cases
where every other medicine has failed. Dr. Angell , our best
authority on ophthalmic disease, commends it “ in superficial
and deep -seated ulcerations of the cornea, especially in scro
fulous subjects ; in catarrhal ophthalmia, with thin secretion
and irritation of the edges of the lids ; and in ulceration of
the tarsal edges, with thin secretion.” In bronchitis it is
rarely indicated, save when the constitutional symptoms call
for it, and there is much thin expectoration . But Dr. Black
and Dr. Bayes both think it should be used oftener, especi
ally in aged people.
In inflammation of the urinary tract Arsenic is more than
rivalled by other medicines, as Cantharis and its analogues.
In affections of the generative organs its chief use has been
in chronic menorrhagia, where it is praised by Sir Charles
Locock and Mr. Hunt ; and in endo-metritis. It will prob
ably be found curative in noma pudendi, in cancer scroti, and
where the soft chancre runs into phagedana or sloughing.
The powerful irritant action of Arsenic upon the mucous
membranes makes it almost certain that it must exercise a
similar influence upon their external continuation, the skin .
That it does so, affirmed by Hahnemann, is witnessed to also
by Hunt, Inman, H. C. Wood, and Christison ; and Ringer
and Warburton Begbie concur in stating that its first effect
on skin disease is to make it redder and more inflamed , worse
in fact than before the treatment was begun . But upon this
point we have one of Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre's most valuable
contributions. In a monograph de l'action de l'Arsenic sur la
peau (Baillière, 1872) he has demonstrated from numerous
facts, collected and observed, that Arsenic has the power of
causing almost every form of cutaneous disorder. He gives
instances of its production of pruritus, erythema, erysipelas,
urticaria ; of papules, vesicles ( including a true zona) ,
pustules, and furuncles, ; of discolorations; and of falling of
the hair and nails. He does not mention squamæ in his list ;
138 ARSENICUM .

but here we have the testimony of Hunt and of Tilbury Fox,

both of whom speak of pityriasis as a frequent effect of its
use .
Thus is convicted of unconscious homeopathicity one of
the most generally accepted of all the virtues of Arsenic, viz.
its power over cutaneous disease. And here also the small
dose accompanies the law of similars . Mr. Hunt gives a case
in which no more than the oth of a grain could be borne at
a time; yet with such minute doses he cured a chronic
psoriasis guttata . He recommends just enough to be given
to keep the conjunctiva slightly affected throughout the
course—a relic, probably, of the old mercurial practice ; but
Dr. Ringer finds it quite unnecessary “ to induce these toxic
symptoms to ensure the beneficial influence of the remedy ."
At the present day the tendency among dermatologists
seems rather to depreciate the unvarying prescription of
Arsenic in skin disease which Mr. Hunt's success especially
brought so into vogue. But it is still highly reputed for
chronic pemphigus and the squamæ , and in general practice
seems to be used pretty universally when the skin is affected.
With us of the homeopathic school, having many other
remedies for skin disease, it does not play so large a part or
undergo so indiscriminate an employment. But in chronic
cases of urticaria, eczema, pemphigus, acne, rupia simplex,
lichen, prurigo, pityriasis, psoriasis, and lepra we esteem it as
highly as our brethren , and use it as the leading remedy.
Where the constitution is coincidently affected in the arsenical
manner, quite high dilutions of the drug may suffice. *
3. Arsenic affects the serous hardly less powerfully than
the mucous membranes . The inflammations here caused by
it are of aa sub-acute character, with speedy and copious serous
(less often purulent) effusion. The pleura are most fre
quently affected ; then the pericardium ; less often the peri
toneum and arachnoid . The post- mortem evidence of this is
to be read in every work on toxicology.
* See Brit. Journ . Of Hom ., iv, 349.
 ARSENICUM . 139

Correspondingly, it is highly esteemed in the school of

Hahnemann in inflammations of the serous membranes,
whenever very copious serous effusion is present. No remedy
equals it here, especially when the pleura or pericardium is
the part affected . It thus resembles Apis ; and, like that
medicine, is often very useful in chronic serous dropsies
remaining after inflammation . Some capital cases in point
are related by Dr. Yeldham in the third and fourth volumes
of the Annals of the British Homeopathic Society.
Besides these tissues, Arsenic has a potent influence upon
three important organs of the body ; and this is mainly of
irritant nature, though not without other features. The
organs I refer to are the lungs, the heart, and the kidneys.
4. As regards the lungs, Arsenic first of all congests and
inflames them. This is evident from many symptoms during
life, both in poisonings and provings ; while autopsies
frequently disclose great pulmonary engorgement and even
pneumonia. But there is a dyspnæa manifest in most of these
subjects which cannot always be thus accounted for ; and it
has long ago led homeopathists to use Arsenic largely in the
curative treatment of asthma. Dr. Black writes— “ There is
no medicine which manifests so frequently and so closely the
symptoms of asthma ; and in practice it proves an admirable
remedy.” Dr. Russell, who devotes two of his excellent
Clinical Lectures to asthma, recommends it where bronchitic
asthma tends to become, or has become, chronic ; and fur
nishes several illustrative cases. But I find it very effective
also in the more purely neurotic form of the malady, espe
cially in weakly persons, and where the attacks recur periodi
cally. This is another piece of homeopathic practice which
has been appropriated by our brethren of the old school.
The therapeutists of the stamp of Anstie and Ringer seem to
rely much upon it : the latter praises it in the asthma of
emphysema. In pneumonia Arsenic has found little employ
ment as yet.
5. The action of Arsenic on the heart has been fully
140 ARSENICUM .

studied by the author I have so often cited, Dr. Imbert

Gourbeyre. In his treatise de l'action de l'Arsenic sur le cour
( Baillière, 1874) he adduces copious evidence of the elective
affinity of the drug for this organ and of the profound changes
it sets up . Of functional disorders he specifies palpitation
and cardiac dyspnea (to which he might have added præcor
dial pain and anxiety, often severe) ; and as lesions produced
in the heart he mentions endocarditis and hypertrophy. The
heart sometimes also shares in the fatty - granular degenera
tion which we shall see to result occasionally from arsenical
poisoning.
This influence of Arsenic on the heart has been summed up
by Trousseau and Pidoux in saying that it abolishes its
contractility and often inflames its tissue. The feebleness of
heart thus induced is probably an essential part of the prostra
tion it causes ; and we constantly find in practice that the
pulse grows stronger under its influence. But the power of
the poison over the cardiac substance itself has led us to use
it freely in chronic organic diseases of the organ . In these
especially in dilatation and valvular mischief — the testimony
to its value is loud and unanimous. It relieves pain , palpita
tion, and dyspnoea, besides having (as we shall see directly) a
marked influence over the anasarca always imminent in these
cases .

Such use of Arsenic, long familiar to us homeopaths, seems

now finding its way into the opposite school, especially
among the French . That they employ the arseniate of
antimony probably makes little difference beyond reducing
the dose of the more potent element in the combination . But
we are indebted to our brethren for the demonstration of the
power of the drug over angina pectoris, to which nevertheless
it is quite homeopathic, as no poison causes such severe
præcordial pain and anxiety. An accidental cure by Alex
ander, in the last century , first called attention to it ; and the
latest writer on the subject, Dr. Anstie, styles it “ an invalu.
able remedy.” He considers angina pectoris a cardiac neur .
 ARSENICUM . 141

algia ; and I believe that it is when it is so that Arsenic will

do it so much good. But I have strong reason to think that it
is occasionally a muscular rather than a neurotic affection ;
and here may come in other remedies, of which we have seen
one in Hydrocyanic Acid, and shall see another in Cuprum .
6. On the kidneys Arsenic exerts a very potent influence.
In acute poisoning they share in the general irritation ; so
that their secretion is diminished or suppressed, and if any
>

urine is obtained, it is found to contain albumen . This

presence of albumen is so constant a phenomenon that it has
been assigned as a diagnostic mark between arsenical poi
soning and antimonial. Of the more lasting renal effects of
Arsenic we have full information from the experiments of Dr.
Quaglio. He slowly poisoned six cats with the Arsenite of
Potash , during periods of from one to ten months, and
produced in all more or less completely developed Bright's
disease . During life the urine was scanty, and contained
albumen, fat -globules, renal epithelium , fibrin -casts, and
blood-corpuscles ; it was neutral in reaction, and the propor
tion of solids was below the standard . The animals died
comatose, and after death their kidneys were found enlarged
and hyperemic, and the epithelial cells charged with fat and
granules.
Correspondingly, while the ischuria of acute arsenical
poisoning forms one element of its homeopathicity to cholera,
its deeper effects have led to its use in Bright's disease. It
is apparently the large white kidney -- the " tubal nephritis” of
Dr. Dickinson - to which it is a simile ; and it is this form
which seems to have been present in the cases of cure by it on
record, which are numerous and brilliant. * Of the same
nature is the post -scarlatinal nephritis, in which it is, perhaps,
the favourite remedy in our school : it is certainly mine . But
it must be mentioned that in four out of the six cats experi
mented on by Dr. Quaglio there was found bypertrophy of
See Lancet, Jan. 18, 1862 ; Black, p. 17, note ? ; and Brit. Journ. of
Hom ., xii, 485 ; xiii, 566 ; xiv, 20 ; xvi, 219 ; xvii, 545 , 573.
140 ARSENICUM .

studied by the author I have so often cited, Dr. Imbert

Gourbeyre. In his treatise de l'action de l'Arsenic sur le coeur
( Baillière, 1874) he adduces copious evidence of the elective
affinity of the drug for this organ and of the profound changes
it sets up. Of functional disorders he specifies palpitation
and cardiac dyspncea (to which he might have added præcor
dial pain and anxiety, often severe) ; and as lesions produced
in the heart he mentions endocarditis and hypertrophy . The
heart sometimes also shares in the fatty -granular degenera
tion which we shall see to result occasionally from arsenical
poisoning.
This influence of Arsenic on the heart has been summed up
by Trousseau and Pidoux in saying that it abolishes its
contractility and often inflames its tissue. The feebleness of
heart thus induced is probably an essential part of the prostra
tion it causes ; and we constantly find in practice that the
pulse grows stronger under its influence. But the power of
the poison over the cardiac substance itself has led us to use
it freely in chronic organic diseases of the organ . In these
especially in dilatation and valvular mischief — the testimony
to its value is loud and unanimous. It relieves pain , palpita
tion , and dyspnea, besides having (as we shall see directly ) a
marked influence over the anasarca always imminent in these
cases .

Such use of Arsenic, long familiar to us homæopaths, seems

now finding its way into the opposite school, especially
among the French . That they employ the arseniate of
antimony probably makes little difference beyond reducing
the dose of the more potent element in the combination . But
we are indebted to our brethren for the demonstration of the
power of the drug over angina pectoris, to which nevertheless
it is quite homeopathic, as no poison causes such severe
præcordial pain and anxiety. An accidental cure by Alex
ander, in the last century, first called attention to it ; and the
latest writer on the subject, Dr. Anstie, styles it " an invalu
able remedy." He considers angina pectoris a cardiac neur .
 ARSENICUM . 141

algia ; and I believe that it is when it is so that Arsenic will

do it so much good. But I have strong reason to think that it
is occasionally a muscular rather than a neurotic affection ;
and here may come in other remedies, of which we have seen
one in Hydrocyanic Acid, and shall see another in Cuprum .
6. On the kidneys Arsenic exerts a very potent influence.
In acute poisoning they share in the general irritation ; so
that their secretion is diminished or suppressed, and if any
urine is obtained, it is found to contain albumen. This
presence of albumen is so constant a phenomenon that it has
heen assigned as a diagnostic mark between arsenical poi
soning and antimonial. Of the more lasting renal effects of
Arsenic we have full information from the experiments of Dr.
Quaglio. He slowly poisoned six cats with the Arsenite of
Potash , during periods of from one to ten months, and
produced in all more or less completely developed Bright's
disease. During life the urine was scanty , and contained
albumen, fat-globules, renal epithelium, fibrin -casts, and
blood -corpuscles ; it was neutral in reaction, and the propor
tion of solids was below the standard . The animals died
comatose, and after death their kidneys were found enlarged
and hyperamic, and the epithelial cells charged with fat and
granules.
Correspondingly, while the ischuria of acute arsenical
poisoning forms one element of its homeopathicity to cholera,
its deeper effects have led to its use in Bright's disease. It 9

is apparently the large white kidney-the "Stubal nephritis” of

Dr. Dickinson - to which it is a simile ; and it is this form
which seems to have been present in the cases of cure by it on
record, which are numerous and brilliant.* Of the same
nature is the post -scarlatinal nephritis, in which it is, perhaps,
the favourite remedy in our school : it is certainly mine. But
it must be mentioned that in four out of the six cats experi
mented on by Dr. Quaglio there was found bypertrophy of
See Lancet, Jan. 18, 1862 ; Black, p. 17, note ! ; and Brit. Journ. of
Hon ., sii, 485 ; xiii, 566 ; xiv, 20 ; xvi, 219 ; xvii, 545, 573.
142 ARSENICUM .

the left ventricle ; and this Dr. Dickinson states he has never
found in connection with any other disease of the kidney but
granular degeneration. Hence the power of Arsenic may
possibly extend to this form of Bright's disease also, espe
cially if it is secondary as some pathologists maintain it
always to be) to tubal nephritis. In either form the relation
of Arsenic to inflammations of the serous membranes is an
important element in its homeopathicity ; and indicates its
employment, if not previously, at least when these occur.
It is in this place that we must speak of the power of
Arsenic over dropsy. Its tendency to cause edematous
swellings, local or general, has been noticed by many ob
servers, and among them by our own Fowler, whose name
is indissolubly associated with the Liquor potassa arsenitis of
the Pharmacopoeia . Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre has collected
their testimony in a chapter on the subject in his l'action de
l'Arsenic sur la peau. The latest author who has mentioned
the arsenical anasarca is Dr. Weir Mitchell, of America.* In
the cases which came under his notice he examined the urine,
and generally found evidence, though slight, of renal disorder,
either albuminuria or a few pale tube-casts. Whether this
was its cause or no, Arsenic is undoubtedly “ hydropigenic ;"
and among homeopathists it is always esteemed the most
potent " hydropifuge." Thus Bährwrites- “ Arsenicum is our
most important diuretic. It is suitable in all forms of
dropsy, more particularly in dropsy depending upon heart
disease, and edema of the lungs. After giving Arsenicum ,
a copious diuresis will sometimes set in with astonishing
rapidity, after which the dropsical swelling speedily dis
appears. The result is most doubtful if we have only ascites
to contend against, and inasmuch as the medicine shows its
good effects in a few days already, after a few doses had been
taken , it is useless to continue it for a longer period, in the
vain hope of eliciting good effects from it by persisting in its
use." He recommends the low triturations.
* New York Medical Journal, June, 1865.
 ARSENICUM . 143

III. I come now to the neurotic influence of Arsenic, and

the part played by it in the treatment of the neuroses.
It is universally recognised that Arsenic, like Nitrate of
Silver, affects the nervous centres after its irritant influence
has been more or less exhausted . The disorder induced
sometimes takes the form of tremors and twitches, sometimes
of epilepsy ; more rarely of tetanus. But the most frequent
effect is paralysis. Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre has given us some
" Etudes sur la Paralysie Arsenicale ” in the Gazette Médicale
de Paris for 1858, in which he cites thirty -one observations
It is nearly always paraplegic ; though a
of its occurrence .
case of arsenical hemiplegia is related, in which also the
laryngoscope detected paralysis of the vocal cord on the
affected side.* The arms are affected nearly as often as the
legs. Cramps and contractions in the paralysed limbs are
common : but the most invariable concomitant is neuralgia.
This generally coexists with loss of sensibility, at least to
everything but cold, by which also the neuralgic pains are
brought on or aggravated. The paralysis is most complete
in the hands and feet, and spreads, if it do so, periphero
centrad . There is a sense of great restlessness in the limbs
when the pains are present. The seat of the mischief seems.
to be the spinal cord. In a case observed by Huss the spine
was found tender on pressure ; and Wibmer says that in
autopsies the cord is always seen to be affected, especially
with congestion of the lumbar portion and cauda equina.
Arsenic may thus occasionally find place in the treatment
of myelitis and of epilepsy ; but we have as yet little experi
ence of it in these diseases . On the other hand, it is the
prince of remedies in chorea and in neuralgia, to both of
which the above facts show it to be homeopathic. “In
simple, uncomplicated cases of chorea it is," Dr. Ringer says ,
" by far the best remedy ;” and Dr. Warburton Begbie says
that in an experience of nearly thirty years, and in a large
number of cases, he has never known it to fail. Neuralgia is
* Med . Times and Gazette, Jan. 11th, 1862.
114 ARSENICUM .

a still more important, because more frequent, disorder ; and

one cannot speak too highly of Arsenic in its treatment. In
this estimate I have the concurrence of the late lamented Dr.
Anstie, in his brilliant treatise on the disease. But I cannot
at all concur in his view of the rationale of its action , which
is that the drug has " a happy combination of powers as a
blood -tonic and a special stimulant of the nervous system .”
The “ blood-tonic " properties he ascribes to it are only seen
in disease, as in malarial cachexia, and in the instance he
cites in proof, of anæmic children suffering from chorea after
rheumatism . Its “ special stimulation ” of the nervous
system is hardly shown by sensory paralysis, which he him .
self says is the chief chronic poisonous effect of Arsenic in
this region ; nor would he at least argue that such an influ
ence is antipathic to nerve-pain , for he has demonstrated the
consistency and frequent coincidence of anaesthesia with
neuralgia. When we consider, then , the undoubted pro.
duction of neuralgic pains by Arsenic, and the excellent
results obtained from it with the infinitesimal doses of homæo
pathy, I submit that we are shut up to the admission that its
action is an instance of the operation of the law of similars.
Our experience certainly is that it far excels all other drugs
in the treatment of the idiopathic disorder. The arsenical
neuralgia is pure, i.e. neither inflammatory, toxæmic, nor
reflex. The pain is burning and agonising, accompanied with
great restlessness and anguish ; it is often intermittent, with
tendency to periodic return ; is generally made worse (even
though at first relieved) by the application of cold ; is worse
at rest, and diminished during exercise ; and usually affects
(at least in the first instance) the left side. Such a neuralgia
you often meet with as a consequence of malaria or influenza,
-still more frequently as a symptom of pure debility. If
you will read the cases published by Dr. Quin in the fourth
volume, and by myself in the twenty -second and thirty -first
volumes of the British Journal of Homeopathy , you will
see evidence that Arsenic exerts a magical influence over
 ARSENICUM . 145

pure neuralgiæ , wherever occurring. Some of these were

prosopalgiæ, some gastralgiæ, one sciatica ; and of the first
more than one were instances of the terrible “ tic -doulou
reux,” or “ epileptiform neuralgia,” usually reckoned so
intractable, but which Dr. Quin's skilful use of Arsenic
entirely and permanently removed.
Before leaving the nervous system I must speak of the
mental and moral symptoms which characterise the sufferings
from Arsenic . These are so constant that I cannot but refer
them to a a direct action upon the ideational and emotional
centres . As in the motor and sensory sphere, we have the
mingling of depression and irritation . As there the para
lysis is accompanied with cramps, and the anæsthesia with
neuralgia, so here there is melancholy, but also restlessness,
irritability, anxiety, and anguish. In some forms of melan
cholia and hypochondriasis we may take advantage of this.
action .
In the three great groups which have now passed before
us—the fevers, the inflammations, and the neuroses—the part
of Arsenic, as a poison and as a remedy, is mainly played.
There are other features of its action on which, if time
allowed, we might with interest, if not with profit, dwell.
There is its influence on the blood, causing ecchymoses
during life, and a fluid condition after death ; thus suggest
ing it as a remedy for purpura . There is its influence on
nutrition, whereby it causes steatosis of various organs,
leading to the pseudo -plethora and obesity of the Styrian pea
sants and Vienna horses, or-in poisoning — to rapid fatty
degeneration of tissue resembling that of Phosphorus.
There is its myotic influence, causing the constrictions of the
colon and other hollow muscles graphically described by
Hahnemann, and possibly accounting in some measure for
the cramps so characteristic of its poisonous effects. Then,
in the therapeutic region, there is its power over chronic
rheumatic joints, generally recognised ; which also Dr.
Imbert -Gourbeyre has made it probable is an instance of the
10
146 ARSENICUM .

operation of the law of similars. There is its power over

cancer, whose epithelial form it often cures, and where it
will nearly always relieve pain, retard advance, and improve
the condition of the blood . But I must pause here. I
would only ask you to note the striking testimony borne by
the drug to the validity of the method of Hahnemann.
Because it is the greatest of poisons, it is the greatest of
remedies : and its poisonous and remedial effects go hand in
hand. Every morbid condition in which it has gained repute
it has been seen to cause ; and, by working the same method
since, its therapeutic sphere has been widely extended. To
ague, cutaneous disease, chorea, and angina we have added
among other diseases - typhoid and hectic conditions, cholera,
cancrum oris, gastritis, chronic diarrhea, scrofulous ophthal.
mia, asthma, chronic cardiac and renal disease, and serous
effusions and dropsies. Truly a goodly list ; and it might be
yet extended. For myself I can say this, that were I
reduced to two medicines only out of the whole Pharma
copæia, the two I should choose would be Aconite and
Arsenic .
The action of Arsenic is so extensive, that it has points of
analogy with nearly every medicine in the Materia Medica.
Those which resemble it most closely are Mercurius corro
sivus, Kali bichromicum , and Iodine.
Like all polychrests, Arsenic must be given in various
dilutions to obtain its full efficacy . In cholera, typhoid
conditions, cancer, chronic menorrhagia, and cutaneous dis
eases we may use the 1st trituration of Arsenious acid, or
( which I prefer) the Liquor Potassæ Arsenitis, which con
tains gr. j of Arsenious acid in mcxx. The 3rd dec. tritu
ration is a very useful potency for chronic diarrhea, and for
chronic inflammation of those tissues to which Arsenic is
irritant. The 6th dilution answers admirably for influenza,
coryza, acute serous effusion, and other acute inflammations
to which the drug is homeopathic. The potencies from the
6th upward have proved most serviceable in neuralgia, in
chronic intermittents, and in asthma.
 LECTURE IX .

ARUM , ASAFETIDA , ASARUM, ASCLEPIAS, ASTERIAS, AURUM,

BAPTISIA , BARYTA .

The alphabetical arrangement we are following brings us

now to a series of minor medicines,-each of these, neverthe
less, having its own place in the treatment of disease. The
first in order is
Arum .

Under this head I include both the Arum maculatum — the

“ lords and ladies " of our popular nomenclature — and the
Arum triphyllum , or Indian turnip, which is its American
analogue. Of the former we prepare a tincture from the fresh
root : of the latter the best preparation seems to be a tritura
tion of the expressed juice of the same part with sugar of
milk .
Arum maculatum was proved by Hering, and Arum
triphyllum by Dr. Lippe. Their results, with symptoms
observed in poisoning by the former species, are given in
Allen's Encyclopædia, and their clinical applications are
described by Dr. Hale in his New Remedies.
The one interesting point about Arum is the application
which has been made of its local effects on the mouth to a corre
sponding condition when occurring in malignant scarlatina.
The following description has been given of the former :
“ After chewing a young leaf-stalk for a few seconds, a very
intense, prickling, stinging pain was felt upon the tongue and
mucous membrane of the lips and throat, accompanied with a
flow of saliva, which seemed to relieve the pain a little - the
pains were as if aa hundred little needles had been run into the
148 ASAFETIDA.

tongue and lips.” This was from the Arum maculatum , but
Dr. Lippe has found excellent results from the Arum triphyllum
when scarlatinal and other patients have shown great irrita
tion of the buccal mucous membrane . « The most indicative
symptoms,” he says, “are the very sore feeling in the mouth,
the redness of the tongue, the elevated papillæ, the cracked
lips and corners of the mouth .” The nose also may be sore,
with or without much coryza. Dr. Guernsey speaks of raw ,
bloody surfaces on these parts as characteristic of Arum ,
with which there is much itching, so that children will often
pick at and bore into the places, though so doing causes great
pain , and makes them scream .
Dr. Lippe commends the drug also for clergyman's sore
throat. He gives the dilutions from the sixth upwards.
I have next to speak of
Asafoetida.
The drug known by this name is the dried juice of the
root of the Indian plant which yields it. From the Asafætida
of commerce a tincture is prepared in the usual manner for
homeopathic use.
The chief proving of Asafætida is that of Jörg, in which
twelve persons took part. Some additional experiments are
collated with his in Dr. Allen's article, which gives 585 sym
ptoms to the drug.
Jörg's results are fairly summed up thus by Dr. Phillips.
“ The administration of small doses causes alliaceous eructa
tions ; the digestion is impaired ; there are burning sensa
tions in the fauces ; there is pain, fulness, and oppression of
the stomach ; the abdomen becomes distended with flatus,
which , when discharged , is of a very fetid and disagreeable
character ; there is frequent inclination to evacuate the bowels,
and the discharge is thin and watery. The urine is not
augmented in quantity, but becomes acrid, and communicates
a sense of burning. The pulse is at the same time quickened ;
 ASAFETIDA . 149

the head becomes more or less affected with flying pains,

often attended with much giddiness ; and various nervous and
hysterical phenomena make their appearance. Like the pulse,
the respiration becomes quickened, and the secretion of the
bronchial membrane is promoted .” Pereira adds that “ the
urino -genital apparatus appeared to be specifically affected,
for in the males there was an increase of the venereal feelings,
with irritation about the glans penis, while in the females
the catamenial discharge appeared before its time, and uterine
pain was experienced.”
Our main use of Asafætida is that with which you are
well acquainted, viz. as a remedy for hysterical troubles.
A symptom repeatedly observed by two of the provers
strikingly resembles the globus hystericus ; and hysterical
cough, tympanites, and asthma come within its range of
influence. I confess that I myself rarely use it, preferring
the more agreeable Moschus, whose action seems so very
similar. It is only in tympanitic distension of the abdomen
that it is preferable. Dr. Ringer recommends it here in
doses, for children , of less than a drop of the tincture. Quite
another, and a very inexplicable action of Asafætida, is its
influence upon diseases of bone. Dr. Holcombe writes, “ I
bave twice verified the value of this remedy in scrofulous
caries of the bones. I used the 12th dilution. It is singular
that a remedy, whose principal applications are to the most
fugitive and sympathetic disturbances of the nervous system ,
should extend its curative power to the most deep -seated and
chronic organic lesions.” It is also highly commended in
acute periostitis. I give you these facts as they stand. For
myself, I have given Asafoetida very persistently in several
cases of chronic caries, without being able to discern the
slightest result from its use. It is reputed of value when the
. In all these affections,
milk of nursing mothers is deficient.*
hyper -sensitiveness is said by Dr. Guernsey to indicate the
drug .
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., ii, 417.
150 ASARUM EUROPÆUM .

The relations of Asafoetida as a nervine are with Ambra ,

Moschus, and Valerian . Its influence upon bone ( if a fact )
ranks it with the metals and metalloids Aurum , Fluoric acid ,
Mercurius, Phosphorus, and Silicea.
In hysteric disorders, the dose should probably be from the
2nd downwards. In diseases of bone, Asafoetida has gained
its repute in the dilutions from 12 to 30.
I am entering a region unknown to you when I proceed to
speak of
Asarum Europæum ,
or Asarabacca . A tincture is prepared from the entire
plant.
Asarum was proved by Hahnemann and four others : the
pathogenesis, containing 270 symptoms, is in the third
volume of the Materia Medica Pura . There is a good article
upon it (the last published, I am sorry to say) in the New
Materia Medica .
That Asarum is a local irritant, of the Elaterium and
Veratrum type, to the mucous membranes generally, acting
as errbine, emetic, and purgative, is pretty well known : but
the fact has little bearing on practice. In Hahnemann's
provings we are most struck by, as general symptoms, exces
sive sensibility and general chilliness without thirst : in
particular regions, depression of the cerebral functions with
heavy headache ; weak sight and twitching of the eyelids ;
still more striking dulness of hearing, as though a pellicle
were stretched over the meatus auditorius ; passing of much
mucus from the bowels ;* marked stitching in the lungs ; a
great deal of myalgia in the back and lower extremities.
Asarum has hardly ever been used in disease : the above :

symptoms may occasionally help you to its phenomenal appli

* The symptom " scanty, yellow , mucous stool, in one string," has been
verified by three cases of cure by Dr. E. M. Hale ( Brit. Journ. of Hom .,
xxvi, 331 ).
 ASCLEPIAS TUBEROSA . 151 -

cation . It is said to be suitable to chilly subjects ; and to

remove darting pains after operations on the eyes. It has a
great reputation in Russia as a remedy for the effects of
excessive drinking .
I can say nothing as to the analogous medicines or the dose
of Asarum .

Of the plants known by the name of Asclepias we have infor

mation as to three, the A. incarnata, A. Syriaca, and A.
tuberosa . The first and second seem to have some uterine
influence, and the latter is a potent diuretic, increasing the
solid constituents as well as the fluid portion of the urine.
This we learn from Dr. Hale's New Remedies. But the same
author communicates facts about the

Asclepias tuberosa
which fairly give it a place among homeopathic remedies.
It is used as a tincture or trituration made from the root.
The significant point about this plant is that it is popu
larly known as “ pleurisy root.” Such terms usually have
more or less warrant from fact, and that it is so in the
present case appears from a proving instituted by Dr. Thomas
Nichol, of Belleville, U. S. Large doses caused only colic
and purging ; but from the first decimal dilution he got
decided pleuritic symptoms. Thus - : - “ throughout the
evening the pains kept increasing, making respiration painful,
especially at the base of the left lung, which is dull on
percussion , while the cough is dry and spasmodic .” “ The
pain is very acute on the right side, and seems to be seated in
the pleura .” The remedy deserves a trial.

The next medicine I have to introduce to you is a novel one.

It is made from the star -fish,
152 ASTERIAS RUBENS .

Asterias rubens,
by bruising the dried fish in a mortar and triturating with
milk -sugar.
Our sole knowledge concerning Asterias is derived from the
proving and clinical cases furnished by the late Dr. Petroz.
They are translated from the Journal de la Société Gallicane
(vol. i) in Metcalf's American Provings. Seven persons took
part in the experiments; but no information is given as to
the size or frequency of the doses they took.
Dr. Petroz makes the following remark : - -“ Experimenta
tion on the healthy gives readily, and often in profusion,
symptoms indicating disturbance of function ; but it never
goes on to alteration of tissue, rarely even to the earliest
indications thereof. We must therefore have recourse to
clinical experience. Its teaching is sure, when time has con
firmed it.” To no medicine does this statement apply better
than to Asterias rubens. The skin symptoms alone are well
marked : and these have led to its employment in chronic
ulceration, even when of a cancerous nature, with success.
Its action seems limited to the left side of the body. It has
also cured a case of cerebral congestion with obstinate consti
pation in an old officer : I have myself found it of great use
in a similar case. Asterias had a reputation among the
ancients in epilepsy :: and Petroz cites two cases in which
much benefit resulted from its use in infinitesimal doses.
I have little personal experience with this remedy.
Teste classes it ( with Petroz' assent) in his group headed
by Sulphur, and including Bovista , Æthusa , and Cicuta .
The higher dilutions (12 to 24) were employed in all cases
on record of relief or cure by Asterias.
We now come to a medicine which Homeopathy has done
much to rescue from unmerited neglect, and to restore to a
high place in therapeutics. I speak of gold. There is so
little difference between the action of the metal and its salts
that I shall speak of them generally as
 AURUM . 153

Aurum .
We use the pure metal in the form of a trituration of the
finest gold- leaf, which was that employed by Hahnemann in
bis provings. The trichloride- A , muriaticum-is also used
in homeopathic practice; its solution is aqueous at first and
alcoholic afterwards.
The first proving of Aurum appears in the fourth volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 137 symptoms ob
served by Hahnemann himself ; 198 from 7 fellow -observers ;
and 3 from authors. There are also a few symptoms from A.
muriaticum and A. fulminans. Those of the metal itself were
obtained from one and two hundred grain doses of the first
trituration ; so that they have uncommon value. There is a
second pathogenesis in the Chronische Krankheiten . It con
tains 82 fresh symptoms, of which 75 are Hahnemann's own .
The worth of these, according to the facts we have ascertained ,
is more than problematical. Dr. Allen gives symptoms, both
of Aurum metallicum and of Aurum muriaticum , from addi
tional sources . One of these—the experiments of Dr. Molin
-I have sought to consult, but have failed through the
incorrectness of the reference.
Hahnemann's preface to Aurum is very interesting. He
tells us that the physicians of his time so unanimously pro
claimed the inertness of metallic gold, that he was at first led
to use the muriate . Subsequently, however, he found that
the Arabian physicians had been in the habit of using the
metal itself in a fine powder ; and had praised it as remedial
in those very affections for which he had found the muriate
beneficial. He then prepared a first trituration of gold-leaf
in the usual way, and proved it as described. From the
symptoms produced he found that the drug was perfectly
homeopathic to the maladies for which the Arabians had
given it ; and, guided by the same principle of similarity, he
found it - in the 1st and 2nd triturations — curative in several
other important affections.
154 AURUM.

He could hardly have been aware, when he wrote this in

1825, that in 1811 Chrétien had revived in Paris the use of
powdered gold. In his Observations sur un nouveau remède
dans le traitement des maladies vénériennes et lymphatiques he
communicates. a number of cases illustrative of its value in
syphilis, scrofula, and even in uterine scirrhus ; and states
that the finely powdered leaf has the same effect as the oxide
or the muriate . Niel and Legrand have handed on the
tradition, so that a considerable body of information relative
a

to the action of gold has accumulated, and may be read in the

account of it given by Trousseau and Pidoux.
The anti- syphilitic virtues thus ascribed to gold have
hardly been acknowledged in the old school outside of France .
The drug is not mentioned by Wood or Ringer. But among
homeopathists it holds a high place in many of the tertiary
manifestations of the disease, especially the sarcocele, the
osseous affections, and the cachexia. It does so because the
provings have revealed an elective affinity on its part for the
organs involved. The bones are affected with burning and
boring pains ; sometimes — especially in the face and feet
accompanied by redness and swelling ; sometimes — as in the
head — with nodes ; and in one prover swelling and tenderness
of the right testicle came on for some hours daily.
But the provings go farther than this. In the first place
they characterise the melancholia of Aurum as distinctly
suicidal. One of the experimenters “ imagined himself not fit
for this world, and longed for death : thinking of death gave
him intense joy.” Then they show a marked action on the
nose, which is inflamed without, and blocked up with ulcers
and crusts within ; with putrid smell when blowing it. These
two actions have led to the chief uses of Aurum in the
homeopathic school. In suicidal melancholy Hahnemann
himself repeatedly extols its virtues; and Drs. Chapman,
Bayes,, and Sharp speak in the same sense. Whether this
affection is one primarily seated in the brain is doubtful, from
the other facts about the action of Aurum . I am myself
 AURUM. 155

inclined to think it a hypochondriasis having its seat either in

the liver or in the testes . Dr. Bayes states that the cases in
which he has seen Aurum curative have presented indications
of congestion of the head and liver, with fixed colour in the
face, and a yellowish tinge. Suicidal melancholia , moreover,
is not an unfrequent accompaniment of testicular disease.
The nasal action of the metal has led to its successful use in
chronic nasitis, in crusts of the nostrils, and above all in
scrofulous and syphilitic ozæna. Many testimonies to and
illustrations of its value in this complaint are on record.
Again , one of the affections specified by Hahnemann as
cured by him with gold was a mercurial caries of the nasal
and palatine bones. The French experience has shown that
the action of the metal is closely analogous to that of Mercury,
causing — as it does — its salivation (without affection of the
gums) and its erethistic fever with diuresis and sweat.
Thus Aurum has come to be reputed among us as a remedy
for chronic hydrargyrosis ; in which we have the support of
Dietrich . It is an admirable medicine for those constitutions .
broken down by the combined influence of syphilis and Mer
cury which sometimes come before us for treatment. I once
gave to a poor fellow thus afflicted the 1st trituration of gold .
He came back to me in a week's time, looking quite another
man, and exclaimed— “ Surely you have given me the elixir of
life !" Dr. Chapman has narrated a similar case in the
seventh volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy
( p. 396 ).
Once more . The action of Aurum on the nasal mucous
membrane has naturally suggested its use in that offset of it .
which we call the conjunctiva. Provings have not yet mani
fested the influence of the drug here ; but there are a good
many cases of chronic scrofulous ophthalmia on record in
which it has proved very effectual, even to restoring trans
parency to the opaque cornea .
In these regions of action — in affections of the bones and
glands, and of the oculo -nasal mucous membrane, especially
 256 AURUM .

when of syphilitic, mercurial, or scrofulous origin - Aurum

has made its mark among us. I may add to these that in
the Leopoldstadt Hospital at Vienna it is the favourite
remedy for periostitis ; and cured one severe case of albu
minuria, with general and local dropsy . If I am right, too,
in referring its melancholia to the liver, it is but an action of
the same kind when we hear of it as occasionally curative in
ascites from hepatic disease - possibly cirrhosis ; and in
chronic icterus. But I think that the future use of Aurum
will extend beyond this range. We have not yet utilised the
rushes of blood to head and chest it so markedly causes ,
though Dierbach has recorded his experience of its value in
disturbance of the pulmonary circulation after hæmorrhages.
We have not yet ascertained if it affects the female sexual
system as it does the male ; though the salacity and erections
it causes in the latter are paralleled by the menorrhagia set
up in the former. We have not determined the precise
nature of the dyspnoea caused by it, or applied to practice its
undoubted action upon the heart. I think, too, that strumous
ophthalmia does not include all the affections of the eye it
· can influence. When we read of Herrmann - its most
thorough prover --- experiencing “ excessive tension in the
eyes," now making sight indistinct, as if a black crape were
drawn before the eyes, now causing hemiopia, in which only
the lower half of objects is visible, and now diplopia - I
think that we may find some work for the drug in the treat
ment of glaucoma. Aurum seems to me one of the medicines
of the future.
After Mercury, the most striking analogue of Aurum is
Platina, which is to the female sex what Gold is to the male.
Its points of similarity and difference with Mercury, Arsenic,
Silica, and Phosphorus are well brought out by Dr. H.
Goullon in a paper on the drug translated from the Allg. Hom .
Zeitung in the twenty -second volume of the North American
Journal of Homoeopathy.
Hahnemann's published experience with Aurum was gained
 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA . 157

with the 1st and 2nd triturations ; but subsequently he

resorted to the 12th and at last to the 30th. His disciples
seem to have followed his earlier rather than his later practice
in this matter .

I would speak next of the

Baptisia tinctoria .
This is the “ wild indigo " of North America . We make a
tincture of the bark of the root.
Short provings of Baptisia, made by seven persons, may be
found in vols. v and vii of the North American Journal of
Homeopathy. These, with further pathogenetic and clinical
facts, are collected by Dr. Hale in the article on the drug in
his New Remedies, and by Dr. Allen in his Encyclopædia ,
where the drug has 367 symptoms. There are two mono
graphs extant on the use of Baptisia in typhoid fever, -one,
published separately, by Dr. Bayes (1872) ; the other, by
myself, read as a paper before the British Homæopathic
Congress of 1872, and printed in the Monthly Homeopathic
Review of that year.
It is on this point that the interest of Baptisia is centred.
I have collected, in the paper referred to, fifty -three recorded
cases of continued fever, in all of which the effect of the
medicine was either to induce a speedy crisis, or materially to
abate and curtail the disease. In the discussion which
followed its reading at the Congress speaker after speaker
rose up to confirm from his own experience this estimate of
its value ; and there was not a dissentient voice. Two of
those who spoke were from the United States ; and it was .
from thence that we first heard of its virtues and reputation .
Among the reports examined in the paper is one of the treat
9
ment of the “colonial fever " of Melbourne ; and Dr. Kitching
has just given us his experience of the corresponding dis
order at the Cape, where he has found Baptisia as potent as
158 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA .

Dr. Madden found it in Victoria . * So from four continents

the fame of the medicine comes borne to us ; and we cannot
but give it a full consideration and trial.
The first question must be as to the nature of the continued
fever in which Baptisia has been found so effective. It is
described in the records under several names- "typhus,"
> 6
"typhoid," " continued ," " gastric," “ bilious." Is it never
theless in all the one essential fever we know as “ typhoid ”
or “ enteric ?” or do some of the cases come within other
categories ?
The four distinct forms of idiopathic fever which the
labours of Stewart, of Jenner, and of Henderson have defined
are so universally recognised that I need not dwell upon
them . The only one which concerns us here is the so -called
“ febricula ." This is described as a primary fever - not
catarrhal or sympathetic - pretty closely resembling in
symptoms the onset of the other forms, but differenced in
this, that it rapidly reaches its maximum , and as rapidly sub
sides, within, at the most, five days. It has no local compli
cation or specific eruption . Now it is quite possible that some
of the sporadic cases where the disease has broken up under
Baptisia have been instances of this disorder, and four out of
the fifty -three cases I have collated are perhaps invalidated
on this account. But no such explanation is admissible as
regards the remainder of the single cases in which it dis
played curative powers, as all these were of more pro
longed duration. While in the epidemics reported by two of
the observers, it is noted that under allopathic treatment the
fever lasted two, three, or four weeks, and in two cases
under other homeopathic remedies (Aconite and Bryonia )
for twelve days. That under Baptisia it terminated not
later than the fifth day is therefore no proof that it was
febricula .
But is there yet another form of continued fever, re
* Monthly Hom . Rev., xix, 207.
 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA . 159

sembling typhoid rather than febricula in its duration and

progress, yet specifically distinct ? and is it this disease in
which the good work of Baptisia has been done ? This is
a more difficult question. Jenner, Watson , and Trousseau
seem to answer it in the negative: they think that all the
varieties of fever described by the old nosologists - gastric,
bilious, mucous, nervous, putrid, and so forth - fall under
one or other of the four types now recognised. But the
new nomenclature of the College of Physicians gives us a
“common continued fever," as distinct from either typhus,
typhoid, relapsing fever, or febricula ; and Dr. Aitken cites
several testimonies, direct or indirect, in favour of the
existence of such a species. The opinion of several of our
own school who have expressed themselves on the subject is
of the same tenor. Thus — our lamented Russell, in his
Clinical Lectures, writes : “ I mean by ' gastric fever ' a non
:

infectious, continued fever, which has no regular course ; in

which there is no eruption, and which is not attended with
diarrhoea or intestinal affection.” I must observe upon this,
however, that typhoid is rarely obviously infectious; that its
course varies considerably within certain limits ; and that its
eruption ( according to Trousseau) is often wanting - Chomel,
in seventy cases , missing it in sixteen, and several epidemics
in Touraine being entirely without it. As regards diarrhea,
the same authority notes that it is sometimes (and especially
in the mild form of typhoid he calls mucous) superseded by
obstinate constipation throughout the illness. This leaves us
only the absence of intestinal affection whereby to distinguish
“ gastric ” fever from typhoid . But how is such absence to
be ascertained ? The symptoms during life are too indecisive
to prove a negative, and a post-mortem examination is all but
out of the question.
It seems to me that the onus probandi yet lies with the
maintainers of a common continued fever ” as distinct
from typhoid. My own observations and inquiries dispose
me to think that, excluding febricula , there is but one
 160 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA .

non - epidemic species of low fever, and that is the enteric.

The typhus and relapsing forms are seen only in large towns,
or under peculiar circumstances . Typhoid is constant every
where in more or less degree, having every now and then
from local causes a special outbreak . It is the endemic fever
of all countries, having many names and many varieties of
manifestation, but characterised everywhere by the specific
process it sets up in the Peyerian and solitary glands of the
intestines .
If this be so, then it is for typhoid fever that we have in
Baptisia a remedy so strongly accredited . * I need hardly
point out the importance of the claim set up for it. Typhoid
is a disease of such frequent occurrence and such ghastly
mortality : it invades such high quarters and threatens, if it
do not actually destroy, such valuable lives : it has, even
when not fatal, so lengthened a process, so tedious a conva
lescence, such frequent sequelve of even direr import than
itself, that any professing addition to our power of control
ling it cannot but be welcomed. Especially is it so when the
promise held out is of more than mitigation of severity only ,
more than sustainment of the patient; when it is of actual
abortion and breaking up of the disease. If Baptisia prore
to be the Aconite of this fever, we shall without controversy
have gained a priceless remedy.
That it is so, I have repeatedly during the last twelve
years testified to be my own experience and conviction. But
we must examine a little more closely if we would ascertain
the precise place occupied by the remedy-its relation to the
stages of the disease and the sphere of other medicines. Let
us first consider the experiments made to ascertain the
pathogenetic action of Baptisia .
These show the following symptoms :
After taking during the day (Feb. 5th) four drops of the
mother tincture, Dr. Douglass awoke in the night with a
That it is so is testified by Dr. Gibbs Blake, who bas studied the
different forms of fever under Sir William Jenner himself .
 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA . 161

feeling as if the room were insufferably hot and close, hinder

ing respiration. His pulse was about 90 , full and soft.
There was most uncomfortable burning heat of the whole
surface, especially the face . The tongue was dry, and
smarted and felt sore as if burnt. The heat compelled him
to move to a cool part of the bed, and finally to rise and
open a window , and bathe his face and hands. With these
symptoms there was, he writes, “ a peculiar feeling of the
head, which is never felt except during the presence of fever,
a sort of excitement of the brain, which is the preliminary to ,
or rather the beginning of delirium , which with me never
fails to occur if fever continues and increases to any con
siderable intensity.” He at length got to sleep again , but
awoke the next morning with the same dry and burnt
tongue .
The same symptoms recurred on the night of the 7th, after
four more drops of the tincture. The oppression of breathing
was still more 'marked, and felt quite congestive. Flushed
face and dulness continued during the next day. Each
night while awake he had painful intolerance of pressure as
he lay, especially in the sacral region, obliging him at last to
lie on his face .
On the 10th , after a dose of three drops taken in the
afternoon , the same symptoms rapidly supervened. It is
added that the head felt large, and the eyes were shining ;
the hands also felt large, and were tremulous.
He took no more medicine. The bowels had been con
stipated throughout the proving till the 12th, when they re
sumed their usual condition . He felt weak and tremulous,
as if recovering from an illness, and was not himself again
till the 15th .
The other provers had the same febrile symptoms, with
hot and high - coloured urine. Dr. Rowley records vomiting
and diarrhoea. Dr. Sapp, pain in the stomach , abdomen , and
right hypochondrium , passing down to the right iliac region,
also soreness in the region of the liver . Dr. Smith had
11
162 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA .

diarrhæa, followed by constipation and hæmorrhoids ; and

constipation was present also in Dr Hoyt.
Lastly , in a more ignoble prover , a cat poisoned by Dr.
Burt, the small and large intestines were found congested
and filled with bloody mucus.
From these symptoms two facts seem to stand forth with
unmistakeable clearness.
1st. Baptisia is capable of exciting true primary pyrexia
in the human subject. This is no slight thing, for there are
very few other drugs to which we can ascribe such power.
And this pyrexia, in the case of Baptisia, is exceedingly like
that of the early period of typhoid. The soft and full, yet
quickened pulse, the headache and tendency to delirium , the
soreness all over, and intolerance of pressure when lying, are
marked symptoms of this stage of the disease.
2nd. We have no evidence that Baptisia affects Peyer's
patches as they are affected in typhoid, nor even that it acts
upon them at all as Arsenic and Iodine, and perhaps Mercury
and Turpentine do. But it is certain that it produces con
gestion and catarrh of the intestinal mucous membrane, with
abdominal tenderness and diarrhea. Now this again is the
condition present during the first week of typhoid . * The
Peyerian and solitary glands are, till the seventh day, in
volved merely in the general hyperæmia , but the latter then
subsides, and they stand out alone.
We have, therefore, in Baptisia a medicine precisely
homeopathic to the first stage of typhoid fever, i.e. to the
period antecedent to the full development of the intestinal
affection. There is nothing, I think, to render it incon
ceivable that, administered early and persistently in this
period, it should abort the growth of the disease. There are
two opportunities then afforded it for so doing. The dothien
entérite — as Bretonneau proposed to call the infarction of the
intestinal glands — does not begin till about the fifth or
* See Aitken's Science and Practice of Medicine, i, 397-8.
 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA . 163

sixth day of the fever, to which it is (as it were) secondary.

Why should not its development be altogether prevented ?
Again, on the tenth day there is a natural tendency to reso
lution in the local affection . “ The turgescence,” writes
Trousseau, “ of the aggregate and solitary glands of Peyer,
and of the mesenteric glands, begins to decrease, and goes on
gradually subsiding up to the fourteenth day, at which date the
affected glands are still a little swollen , but by the end of the
third week resolution is complete, excepting that the mesen
teric glands do not quite regain their normal condition till
a short time later." Why should not Baptisia, by abating
the whole force of the malady, favour this tendency sto
resolution ?
Of such an action as the latter, we have seen an analogous
instance in the case of Tartar emetic in smallpox. It does
not prevent the formation of the eruption : but it does
strenuously promote its resolution in the papular or vesicular
stage, so that the processes which end in pitting, and the
concomitant secondary fever, are averted. But to completely
abort the disease as suggested in the former alternative may
be thought without precedent or probability. Yet of this
also a precisely corresponding action has come before us in
that of Aconite, when administered for the effects of a
general chill. Fever may have been already set up, and a
lung or other organ may be giving out signals of distress : but
if actual exudation has not taken place, the whole process
may be checked , and both general and local symptoms may
speedily disappear, under the influence of this noble medi
cine. But it may be said ,-- there is here no specific process ,
no “ essential” disease . The seed of a true morbid poison
once sown in suitable soil , it is very doubtful whether its
natural development can be checked . Well : let us look at
cholera. This is surely as specific and essential a disease as
typhoid. And yet ( as Dr. Russell writes) “ there is the most
perfect unanimity among all homeopathic practitioners as to
the efficacy of Camphor in curing the first stage of cholera "
164 BAPTISIA TINCTORIA .

-i.e. before the vomiting and purging have fully set in .

Now the claim that some of us have raised for Baptisia in
typhoid is that it is the Aconite of its fever and the Camphor of
its enteric flux . I fully admit that further and more precise
experiments, both pathogenetic and therapeutic, are necessary
to substantiate it. I maintain only that a case is made out
for such experiments as our most hopeful outlook in the
treatment of this dire disease.
But the analogy of Aconite and Camphor suggests a step
farther. Aconite has some power, though short of an abor
tive one, over inflammatory fever in every stage. Camphor
is, if Dr. Rubini is to be heard, in some degree an antidote to
the cholera poison throughout. May it not be so with
Baptisia ? Some of the cases recorded seem to show that at
no stage of continued fever is it without beneficial influence,
and to lead to the inference that, unless other remedies are
better indicated , the patient should always have the advantage
of what it can do for him . It might be alternated in the
more advanced period of the disease with the Arsenic, the
Mercury, or the Turpentine we should deem it right to give
for the intestinal affection, just as we alternate Aconite with
the local specific in fully developed inflammations.
I have gone fully into this matter, on account of its great
practical importance. I hope that the facts alleged may
induce some of those who hear me to test the remedy in
their own sphere of work, and to report the results. It need
not be given in infinitesimal quantities. Drop-doses of the
mother -tincture, or small portions of an infusion , were
administered in most of the published cases . Such doses,
moreover, will probably ensure a wider range for the medi
cine.. The tendency in America just now is to restrict its action
in typhoid to cases in which its minuter symptomatology is
reproduced — as soreness in lying, a sense of being all to
pieces, and so forth . But it will be observed that those who
write thus use the higher dilutions exclusively. For more sub
stantial doses it seems only necessary that the patient shall
 BARYTA CARBONICA. 165

be within the first ten days of the fever, or at any rate shall
not have passed from the “ gastric " into the “ typhoid ” con
dition (I use these terms phenomenally), to ensure excellent
effects from the drug.
Baptisia has found little use as yet outside the sphere of
continued fever. Dr. Bayes, saying truly that its most
marked action there is to clean the tongue and enable food
to be taken , recommends it in analogous gastric conditions,
with much sinking at the stomach . I myself find much use
for it in the feverish colds of aged people, which often
assume a low type. Dr. Eubulus Williams has recently
spoken well of it in smallpox ,** and Dr. Dyce Brown in
relapsing fever.
The nearest analogue to Baptisia is Gelseminum , which
takes its place in the “remittent fever ” of childhood, now
maintained by most observers to be of the enteric type.
Of the dose I have already spoken.

I have last to speak of the salts of Barium . Of these we

have information as to three, the B. acetica, B. carbonica,
and B. muriatica . Let us take first the most important of
these,
Baryta carbonica .
It is of course prepared for our use by trituration .
Baryta carbonica makes its earliest appearance in the first
edition of the Chronic Diseases, where it has 286 symptoms.
In the second edition the list has increased to 794, eight
others contributing to it. Many of the additional symptoms,
however, were obtained from the acetate. Dr. Allen judi
ciously isolates those of the carbonate, and, adding some other
observations, gives it a pathogenesis of 674 symptoms.
The main interest of Baryta carbonica in my eyes lies in
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi, 344 .
† Ibid ., p. 361 .
166 BARYTA CARBOXICA .

its influence on the tonsils. The muriate is, as we shall see,

a powerful remedy for glandular engorgements ; and the car
bonate shares its virtues in an eminent degree when the
glands affected are the tonsillar. In chronic enlargements of
these organs there is general agreement as to this property of
Baryta carbonica ; but it is not so well known as a remedy
for acute amygdalitis, for quinsy. Yet it is here, in my
experience, the most potent of medicines. It was from Dr.
Ransford that I first got the hint of its value ; and he has
recently given his experience on the subject.*警 It was sug.
gested to him , he says, by Dr. Stens of Bonn ; and has since
been of unfailing efficacy in his hands. I can speak almost
as unreservedly . It is important to distinguish the precise
form of angina which calls for Baryta. It is not the inflam
mation of the mucous membrane, where Belladonna is so
potent, or, if there be much ædema, Apis ; but it is when the
parenchyma of the tonsils is the seat of the mischief. It has
rarely occurred to me to see suppuration follow when Baryta
has been administered in good time for this disorder.
Baryta is also considered a valuable remedy for senility,
so far as this is premature and therefore morbid. It has
sometimes removed, in old men , the after -consequences of
apoplexy.
The medium dilutions as the 6th and 12th - of this
medicine are most in credit .

Baryła acetica was, as I have said, the form in which the

metal was proved by several of Hahnemann's fellow -obser
vers.. Their symptoms — indicated by Hahnemann with a line
-have been separated from the rest by Dr. Allen ; and, with
those of a recent case of poisoning, are 223 in number.
The poisoning case I have referred to, which was fatal,
may be read in the seventeenth volume of the Monthly
Homeopathic Review (p. 505) . It revealed an activity on the
* Brit . Journ. of Hom ., xxxi, 737.
 BARYTA CARBONICA . 167

part of the salt hitherto unsuspected : the patient died in the

full possession of his senses, but with absolute paralysis of all
the voluntary muscles. The observer, Dr. Lagarde, pro
ceeded to test its action upon himself. “ After a lapse of
three hours, discomfort and general weakness with light
headedness set in .. In the upper extremities, and under the
scalp and skin of the face, formication was felt. After a
second period of three hours the weakness bad perceptibly
increased, and the left arm could no longer be moved,
although sensation was intact. Dr. L. found it impossible
to pull the bell or to leave the bed, and eight hours after
taking the dose the upper and lower extremities were almost
paralysed . The paralysis spread to the abdomen, then to
the chest and neck, and lastly to the sphincters. Coughing,
spitting, and even the uttering of polysyllables, became
difficult; the respirations were laboured , and the urine and
fæces were evacuated involuntarily. The pulse fell to 56."
Such facts explain the repute of Baryta carbonica in para
lytic affections, and suggest the acetate as a still more
potent form of administering the metal.

Baryta muriatica, the chloride of barium, was the prepara

tion of the drug given of old in scrofulous disease. Its
physiological action is little known ; but it has occasionally
been given with much benefit in disease of the mesenteric
and other glands in the homeopathic triturations, as you
may read in Dr. Goullon's treatise on Scrofula.
 LECTURE X.

BELLADONNA .

We shall devote to -day's lecture to the consideration of

one of the most important remedies in homeopathic practice
-another apt illustration, with Aconite and Arsenic, of the
maxim magis venenum , magis remedium — the Atropa
Belladonna .
We prepare a tincture from the entire fresh plant in the
usual manner .
Hahnemann early devoted attention to the pathogenetic
effects of Belladonna, publishing in his Fragmenta de viribus
medicamentorum positivis (1805) a list of 99 symptoms ob
served by himself, and 304 taken from records of poisoning
and overdosing. In the first volume of the last edition of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre (1830) the list has swollen to 1440, of
which 390 are his own, 585 from thirteen fellow -provers, and
475 from seventy -two authors. Since that time observations
of the poisonous effects of the plant have multiplied ; and fresh
provings of it, in small doses of the extract, have been made
by the Vienna Provers' Society.* These I have myself
collated with Hahnemann's pathogenesis, after revising the
cited symptoms of the latter from their originals, in an
arrangement of the drug for the Hahnemann Materia Medica.
I have included many of the observed effects of Atropia, the
alkaloid contained in Belladonna, to which most, if not all, of
its active properties are due. Among these are some excel
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., vi.
 BELLADONNA . 169

lent provings conducted under the superintendence of Dr. E.

M. Hale, and recorded in the Transactions of the Homæo.
pathic Medical Society of the State of New York for 1868 .
The provers -- four in number - took doses of from the
hundredth to the fifth of a grain . The results of recent
experimentation with Atropia on animals, which has been
very extensive, are well summed up by Dr. Horatio Wood ;
and to his article, to the chapter on Belladonna by Dr. John
Harley in his Old Vegetable Neurotics, and to the Etude de la
Belladonne of Dr. Meuriot, I shall frequently refer in the
course of my remarks.
Belladonna is an excellent illustration of the fruitfulness of
the Hahnemannian as compared with the ordinary method of
studying medicines. The traditional plan has been to find
out by a few experiments in what class or classes a drug is to
be ranked — whether it is emetic, purgative, sudorific, narcotic,
and so forth ; and then to use it in disease when it is thought
desirable to obtain such effects from it. But Hahnemann
taught that every drug must be studied as a separate
individual; that no general expression or classification can
describe its action ; and that a complete register of the effects
it produces is indispensable for its use as a medicine. The
result of the former course of proceeding has been to class
Belladonna as a narcotic and sedative, and to use it in a few
forms of pain and spasm . To these, previously to the
endosmose from homeopathy which has set in during the last
eight years, the employment of the drug was restricted, save
when Trousseau gave it empirically in constipation and acute
rheumatism . But the symptoms obtained from it by Hahne
mann and those who have followed him display its influence
on well -nigh every part of the organism ; and suggest its
application to a great variety of morbid phenomena.
But now in applying, as well as in studying our medicines,
the method of Hahnemann is the only one largely available.
What use can be made of the information obtained except upon
the principle of similia similibus ? What avails it to know
170 BELIA DONNA .

that Belladonna disorders perception, ideation, and emotion in

the hundred and more various ways I have exhibited in my
-arrangement ? There is no malady in which it can be desir
able to set up such disorder. But the rule “ let likes be
treated by likes ” at once lays hold of the whole body of
morbid phenomena induced by a drug, and applies it to the
treatment of disease. Because Belladonna has this vast
range of poisonous action, therefore and just so far has it
power to cure. It thus sprang rapidly, in the hands of
Hahnemann and his disciples, into the first rank of poly
chrests . The Practical Observations of Hartmann (1838),等* to
which I shall make frequent reference, well exhibit its estima
tion and employment in the homeopathic school. His cata
logue of disorders in which it has been found beneficial
includes the great majority of fevers, inflammations, conges
tions and neuroses . It is probably more frequently prescribed
in homeopathic practice for acute disease than any other
medicine save Aconite .
Let us first consider the traditional knowledge and use of
the drug, and see how far it can be recommended as worthy
of imitation .
1. It had long been noted, as Pereira says, that Belladonna
>

relieved external pains rather than internal. Physiological

experimentation has now explained this, by showing that the
extremities of the sensory nerves are affected by it before
their trunks, which indeed require large doses to influence
them . Thus anesthesia is most readily induced by the local
application of the drug ; but it occasionally appears after
its ingestion. It was a prominent symptom in Dr. Hale's
provers ; and the amaurosis which we shall see caused so
noften by Belladonna is of a piece with it.
Belladonna is thus a strictly local anæsthetic, acting as
such even when introduced into the general circulation. The
only truly analogous morbid state, as a whole, to that in
* Translated by Dr. Okie ( 1816 ).
 BELLADONNA . 171

duced by it, is the absence of sensibility which sometimes

exists in mental disorder. But the antipathic action of the
drug may here find a legitimate sphere of usefulness, and it
may be employed — Iocally applied in ointment, liniment, and
plaster - as an anodyne for external pains. Perhaps we
homeopathists do not avail ourselves sufficiently of such
palliative aids, which, with proper precautions, are as harm
less as they are comforting.
2. Belladonna affects the motor just as it does the sensory
nerves, i.e. paralysing their extremities first, and then ( if in
sufficient quantity) their trunks. Its action on the motor
centres is, as we shall see hereafter, something quite different.
But this power of causing peripheral paralysis is turned to
useful account when the drug is used locally as an anti
spasmodic, as (for instance) in rigidity of the os uteri during
labour. Such a use of it is probably seen in its control over
the nocturnal enuresis of children . The bladder is one of the
few organs which it paralyses when taken internally ; and to
a lesser degree of the same influence must, I think, be referred
its power in this malady, which implics excess of irritability
rather than want of power. The main proof of this position
is that large doses are required - ten or twenty drops of the
tincture ; and homeopathic records are significantly silent on
the practice. I have never seen any benefit from the doses we
ordinarily use ; and in this case we need not fear the produc
tion of physiological effects from the internal administration
of the drug in substance, as children below puberty are
singularly insusceptible to its disturbing influence.
3. Almost the same remarks may be made as to the action
of Belladonna on the sympathetic nerve-fibres, only that here
(with a not uncommon antagonism) it excites instead of
depressing. But here also it affects primarily the extremities
of the nerves ; and its influence is only certainly manifest
when it is locally applied , -- the dilatation of the pupil being
the sole witness to it after internal administration. Here
also we avail ourselves of the physiological action of the
270 BELLA DONNA .

that Belladonna disorders perception, ideation, and emotion in

the hundred and more various ways I have exhibited in my
arrangement ? There is no malady in which it can be desir
able to set up such disorder. But the rule “ let likes be
9

treated by likes ” at once lays hold of the whole body of

morbid phenomena induced by a drug, and applies it to the
treatment of disease. Because Belladonna has this vast
range of poisonous action, therefore and just so far has it
power to cure. It thus sprang rapidly, in the hands of
Hahnemann and his disciples, into the first rank of poly
chrests. The Practical Observations of Hartmann (1838) ,* to
which I shall make frequent reference, well exhibit its estima
tion and employment in the homeopathic school. His cata
logue of disorders in which it has been found beneficial
includes the great majority of fevers, inflammations, conges
tions and neuroses. It is probably more frequently prescribed
in homeopathic practice for acute disease than any other
medicine save Aconite.
Let us first consider the traditional knowledge and use of
the drug, and see how far it can be recommended as worthy
of imitation .
1. It had long been noted, as Pereira says,, that Belladonna
relieved external pains rather than internal. Physiological
experimentation has now explained this, by showing that the
extremities of the sensory nerves are affected by it before
their trunks, which indeed require large doses to influence
them. Thus anæsthesia is most readily induced by the local
-application of the drug ; but it occasionally appears after
its ingestion. It was a prominent symptom in Dr. Hale's
provers ; and the amaurosis which we shall see caused so
often by Belladonna is of a piece with it.
Belladonna is thus a strictly local anæsthetic, acting as
such even when introduced into the general circulation. The
only truly analogous morbid state, as a whole, to that in

* Translated by Dr. Okie ( 1846 ).

 BELLADONNA . 171

duced by it, is the absence of sensibility which sometimes

exists in mental disorder. But the antipathic action of the
drug may here find a legitimate sphere of usefulness, and it
may be employed locally applied in ointment, liniment, and
plaster - as an anodyne for external pains. Perhaps we
homeopathists do not avail ourselves sufficiently of such
palliative aids, which, with proper precautions, are as harm
less as they are comforting.
2. Belladonna affects the motor just as it does the sensory
nerves, i.e. paralysing their extremities first, and then ( if in
sufficient quantity) their trunks. Its action on the motor
centres is, as we shall see hereafter, something quite different.
But this power of causing peripheral paralysis is turned to
useful account when the drug is used locally as an anti
spasmodic, as (for instance) in rigidity of the os uteri during
labour. Such a use of it is probably seen in its control over
the nocturnal enuresis of children . The bladder is one of the
few organs which it paralyses when taken internally ; and to
a lesser degree of the same influence must, I think, be referred
its power in this malady, which implies excess of irritability
rather than want of power. The main proof of this position
is that large doses are required — ten or twenty drops of the
tincture ; and homeopathic records are significantly silent on
the practice. I have never seen any benefit from the doses we
ordinarily use ; and in this case we need not fear the produc
tion of physiological effects froin the internal administration
of the drug in substance, as children below puberty are
singularly insusceptible to its disturbing influence.
3. Almost the same remarks may be made as to the action
of Belladonna on the sympathetic nerve - fibres, only that here
( with a not uncommon antagonism) it excites instead of
depressing. But here also it affects primarily the extremities
of the nerves ; and its influence is only certainly manifest
when it is locally applied , —the dilatation of the pupil being
the sole witness to it after internal administration. Here
also we avail ourselves of the physiological action of the
172 BELLADONNA .

drug, using it locally as a mydriatic. I shall return to this

subject when I come to its action on the eye.
4. There is yet another power of Belladonna which may
often be usefully employed, but which as yet is difficult of
explanation ; I mean the arrest of secretion it causes, notably
in the salivary glands and the skin . That this action is
exerted through the nerves is pretty certain, both from the
rapidity with which it is induced, and from the antagonism
displayed in regard to it by two such pure neurotics as
Muscarine and Physostigma. But it can hardly be brought
about by vaso -motor excitation, as the dried surfaces are
congested rather than anæmic ; nor will the depression of
the chorda tympani which is proved to exist account for its
action on other glands, which have not (as far as we know )
any such excitor nerve as have the salivary. But, however
caused, the arrest of secretion which Belladonna brings about
may not unfrequently be induced with benefit to our patients.
We have probably better ways of checking the sweats of
phthisis or other such fluxes, which require the internal admi
nistration of the drug. But its local application in hidrosis of
the hands or feet, in salivation, and - above all — to check the
secretion of milk in sudden weaning or threatened mastitis, is
a practice often fraught with advantage.
I have willingly dwelt on these actions of Belladonna , as in
them we are on common ground with our brethren of the old
school, and in our frank acceptance of such practices lies one
of the hopes of a better understanding in the future. But it
would be a great error to suppose that in such physiological
effects and their application on the antipathic principle we
have the whole sphere of the drug. When we look a little
farther, we see behind these phenomena of the periphery
central disturbances of a very different kind. While the
retina is insensible to actual objects, visual hallucinations
throng about the subject of Belladonna's influence. While
the frog's motor nerves , when poisoned with it, will transmit
no influence, its spinal cord is vibrating with intense agita
 BELLADONNA . 173

tion, cnly waiting their recovery to throw every limb into a

state of tetanus. While the dilated pupil would indicate
that the brain was suffering from anæmia or effusion, its
actual condition is that of active congestion and often furious
excitement. These phenomena - as also the dry throat, the
scarlet skin , and the conjunctival and vesical irritation which
so often appear - point to properties of another kind . Now,
although writers on Materia Medica treat of Belladonna as a
pure narcotic, a toxicologist like Christison does not hesitate
to class it among the narcotico -acrids, adducing several
instances in which inflammatory irritation - as of the throat
and bladder - have resulted from its ingestion. We have
only to suppose that it exerts this influence upon the cerebro
spinal centres also — that it irritates nervous tissue besides
disordering nervous function ; and the whole problem is
solved . The symptoms of tissue -irritation are seen at the
centre, those of functional excitation or depression at the
periphery of the nervous system ; and hence the double set of
phenomena manifested.
For this doctrine, long current in the homeopathic school
- viz. that Belladonna causes inflammatory irritation of the
cerebro- spinal substance , we are glad to receive the support
9

of Dr. Harley. At the end of his analysis of the effects of the

drug he concludes that “the whole of the phenomena may be
attributed to excessive stimulation of the nerve - centres at
tended by increased oxidation ;” and that “ hyperoxidation of
>
nerve-tissue " is the essential action of the poison. This is
but the same thing in other words.
Let us now consider, in this light, the disturbances set up
by Belladonna in the brain and cord ; and the therapeutic
applications to which they have led under the guidance of the
law of similars. We may divide our matter according as the
phenomena are those of sensibility, of motility, of the cerebral
functions proper, or of the brain as a material organ.
1. The sensory disturbance caused by our drug varies
according as the centre or the periphery is most affected. In
174 BELLADONNA .

the latter case we have the anæsthesia which has already

come before us ; in the former we have such a condition as
this, reported by Hahnemann, and confirmed by Harley
“ Great irritability and impressionableness of all the senses ;
he tastes and smells everything more acutely ; the sense of
taste , of sight, and of hearing is keener, and the mind is more
easily moved and the thoughts more active.” Such hyper
æsthesia is always found to be an indication for Belladonna in
homeopathic practice . To this point the statements of 3

Pereira are singularly though unconsciously pertinent. “ In

the first degree of its operation ,” he writes , “Belladonna
diminishes sensibility and irritability. This effect (called by
some sedative ) is scarcely obvious in the healthy organism , but
is well seen in morbid states, when these properties are preter
naturally increased ."
2. The central motor disorder caused by Belladonna is
quite analogous to its sensory disturbance, but is of more
varied character. Now we see twitchings, jerkings, and jacti
tations like those of chorea, to which in one case of poisoning
they were compared by the reporter.* Now the symptoms
are tetaniform ; the animals experimented upon, says Dr.
Fraser, appear as if suffering from Strychnia.t Still more
frequently, in severe cases of poisoning, clonic convulsions of
epileptic type appear. I Again, there may simply be great
restlessness and bodily inquietude.
All this is of a piece with the hyperæsthesia we have seen in
the sensory sphere, and, like that, indicates the homeopathic
use of the medicine. In chorea and tetanus we have scant
records of its employment. Dr. Croucher has lately commu
nicated a case of the latter disorder in which a Belladonna
plaster along the spine seems to have been the curative
agent. || But in eclampsia, infantile and puerperal, it is

See Hahn. Mat. Med., part iii, s. 22. + Ibid ., s. 28, 29.
I Ibid ., s. 36-13. § Ibid ., s. 41-47.
|| Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiii , 266.
 BELLA DONNA . 175

largely and successfully used among us ; and in epilepsy

itself has no mean reputation. It probably acts here by
modifying the irritability of the medulla oblongata, to which
Schroeder van der Kolk has taught us to look as the centre of
the epileptic convulsion. By the same action it influences .
hydrophobia, whose phenomena seem to depend on inflamma
tory irritation of the medulla and its issuing nerves ; and thus .
also it occasionally benefits laryngismus, whooping- cough, and
asthma. If it is to do good in affections like these, the
patients must (as a rule ) be young and impressionable
subjects, of sanguine -nervous temperament ; and, in epilepsy ,
the malady should be of recent origin. The use of the
remedy on a large scale in this last disease--as by Greding,*
Grandi,ť and Michéa, —where all sorts of cases are taken
together, has not yielded any great percentage of cures. But
Trousseau, after thirty years' experience, declares the Bella
donna treatment of epilepsy the least inefficacious he has
known ; and speaks of having obtained aa certain number of
solid cures . As to hydrophobia the question is still moro
doubtful. But it is impossible to read the mass of evidence
collected by Bayleg without concluding that Belladonna must
sometimes have cured, and has often prevented, this diro
disease, to which it is confessedly homeopathic in the first
degree. Youatt had no small confidence in it as a prophy
lactic in dogs themselves. Il
So far the motor disturbance of Belladonna has been
obviously connected with its irritant influence on the nervous
centres. But now a glance at its pathogenesis will show û
good many symptoms of loss of power over the extremities ;
and this not from exhaustion only, but occurring compara
tively early in the poisoning. Sometimes, from Atropia
* Ado. Med . Pract ., ed. Ludwig, vol . i.
+ Gaz. Méd . de Paris, 1854, p. 757.
| Gaz. des Hôpitaux, 1861, p. 563-578. '
§ Bibl. de Thérap ., ii, 502.
|| See Watson's Lectures, 4th ed., i, 629.
176 BELLADONNA.

especially, it is that the limbs are heavy and helpless : the

condition is compared by one observer to the first stage of the
progressive paralysis of the insane. More commonly, with
Belladonna itself, it is a loss of co -ordination , resembling that
of locomotor ataxy. I have pointed out in another place * that
the poison has nearly all of the apparently incongruous
symptoms which characterise this singular disease. In the
eye it causes the injected conjunctiva ; the dilated, sometimes
varying pupils ; the ptosis; the diplopia ; and the amaurosis
so often observed in ataxy. It has incontinence of urine and
tactile anæsthesia ; and (according to Brown -Séquard ) depres
sion of reflex excitability. Since, moreover , the pathological
basis of the phenomena of this disease is in the first instance of
inflammatory nature, it would be the truest homeopathy to
give Belladonna as a remedy in its early stages. I have had
one well -characterised though incipient case, in which a
complete cure has been effected by the 1st decimal dilution of
the drug. As, moreover, a morbid process similar to that of
locomotor ataxy in other regions of the cord appears to lie at
the bottom of other diseases, as the “ glosso -laryngeal para
lysis ” of Duchenne, wasting palsy, the paralysis of the
insane, and infantile paralysis, the trial of Belladonna may
be suggested in the incipience of these maladies also .
Trousseau and Pidoux speak of Bretonneau as having
obtained in several cases of paraplegia a cure as unexpected
as inexplicable by the use of the drug.
3. We come now to the action of Belladonna in the mental
and moral sphere, which is one of the most potent it exerts.
Perception , ideation, and emotion are equally affected ; and
in a manner similar to that which we have seen in the regions
of sensibility and movement. The drug excites and at the
same time perverts their function ,-blunting their reaction
to real impressions, while quickening in them a feverish
automatic activity, spurring them on in a rapid and dis
* On the various forms of Paralysis ( Turner, 1869 ).
 BELLADONNA . 177

ordered course until they fail for exhaustion. Hallucinations,

delirium (often compared to delirium tremens) , insane
talking and acting, melancholy , and rage are the features of
this part of the pathogenesis of Belladonna ; and are present
in the same degree and variety in that of no other drug save
its congeners Hyoscyamus and Stramonium .
Correspondingly, Belladonna occupies in homeopathic
practice the first rank among the remedies for cerebral dis
turbance . It is best indicated in the sthenic and congestive
delirium of the fevers and exanthemata ; in mania -a -potu ;
in juror transitorius ; and in acute maniacal delirium, the
dilire aigue of the French . A case of this last kind, related
by Dr. Maudsley, resulted from transfer of erysipelas from
the leg to the brain ; and to this disease we shall hereafter
see Belladonna strikingly homeopathic and curative. It
should also be serviceable in acute melancholia ; and in the
alternation of epilepsy with insanity. Hitherto, indeed,
homeopathy has had little opportunity of proving its powers
in the treatment of mental disease . But now that the New
York State Asylum has been erected for carrying out our
method in the care of the insane, we shall soon learn what
we can do in this direction, and how to do it. At present we
must be content with the occasional results obtained in the
ordinary practice, where of old time Belladonna was often
employed with success in mania and mental disorder gene
rally. Trousseau and Pidoux justify this practice, naïvely
remarking that “ experience has proved that a multitude of
maladies are cured by therapeutic agents which seem to
act in the same manner as the cause of the disease they
oppose,”
4. Throughout these pictures of sensory , motor, and mental
>

disorder we continually have more or less evidence of the co

existence of active determination of blood. The disturbance
set up is indeed, as I have argued, inflammatory in essence .
Still more marked is this feature when we come to the
symptoms of the head itself. The vertigo, intoxication , and
12
178 BELLADONNA .

headache so constantly occurring in the provers are all

hyperæmic in character ; and in poisonings we have pheno
mena of acute cerebral congestion, going on sometimes nearly
to phrenitis, more frequently to apoplexy. For the evidence
of this I must refer you to my arrangement of the drug in
the Hahnemann Materia Medica : I must here pass at once to
:

its therapeutical applications.

The vertigo of Belladonna is, as I have said, hyperemic ;
it is worse on movement and relieved in the open air. In
Dr. Harley's experiments its development seemed to coincide
with the rise of the pulse. Such congestive vertigo, when
occurring in subjects not too advanced in life, yields readily
to the drug. Of its headache I have been able to collect no
less than seventy -eight instances, including almost every
variety of the affection . Its most frequent seat is the fore
head and the temples . Belladonna is, from these effects and
from clinical experience, our chief remedy in headache. It is
suited both to the nervous or neuralgic form, and to the
congestive. Heavy, drooping eyelids, and blindness or flashes
of light before the eyes, point to it ; also flushed face, hot
head, and sense of burning in the eyeballs. Secondary
vomiting does not contra - indicate it ; but in true gastric
deadache it is of po use . The Belladonna headache is
always aggravated by light, noise, and movement. Its
essential characters, indeed, are hyperæmia and hyper
asthesia .
It is but a step farther to say that in arterial congestion of
the brain , from almost any cause , Belladonna is an invaluable
remedy. The only instance in which it is outrivalled is the
cerebral hyperæmia of sun -stroke, where Glonoin takes its
place ; though not necessarily to its exclusion . Nor does it
cease to be of avail when the congestion runs on to inflamma
tion. I must agree with Dr. Bähr that its action does not
reach to meningitis, if the meninges he has in view are the
dura mater and arachnoid . Over the inflammatory results of
injury to the skull it has thus little power. But in ordinary
 BELLADONNA. 179

phrenitis or encephalitis, such as we meet with in the course

of reaction from concussion, and as the result of mental
excitement, intemperance, and such - like causes, Belladonna
is (with or without Aconite) the main remedy ; that is, if the
patient is in the first stage of the disorder, and not in that of
effusion or collapse. It is no less valuable in apoplexy, as
long as cerebral hyperæmia is present, whether before or after
extravasation has occurred . Here, too, it is useful to check
the tendency to secondary inflammation .
Before leaving the sphere of the nervous system , I must
speak of the action of Belladonna in neuralgia. Its causation
of this phenomenon is doubtful,-only one symptom of the
kind being on record, in the fourth of Dr. Hale's provers.*
But Dr. Anstie has argued (mainly on the ground of the
numerous complications so often present in severe cases
spasms, paralyses, inflammations, disorders of nutrition ,
secretion , and sensation ) that true neuralgia is always of
central origin . The particular seat of it he thinks the
posterior root of the spinal nerve in which the pain is felt.
In reviewing Dr. Anstie's admirable treatise in the British
Journal of Homoeopathyt I have suggested that it is rather to
the grey nucleus we should look than to the issuing fibres.
I have also pointed out that the analogy of locomotor ataxy,
whose pains Dr. Anstie characterises as truly neuralgic,
indicates that the central mischief is primarily at least of an
inflammatory nature . If these things are so, we have no
difficulty in understanding how Belladonna cures neuralgia
homeopathically, though it has not time enough to set it up.
The neuralgia which indicates it is of comparatively recent
origin, and occurs in young or middle-aged persons. It is
associated with marked symptoms of hyperæmia. It is
visually situate in the trigeminus,—the drug having little
-

influence over sciatica or other neuralgiæ occurring below the

head and neck. This is also the experience of Trousseau.
* See Hahn . Mat. Med ., part iii, s. 438.
+ xxx, 367.
180 BELLADONNA .

Dr. Bayes says that a characteristic symptom here is accession

or aggravation of the pain about 5 p.m.
I have studied thus fully the action of Belladonna in the
sphere of the nervous system , as here we meet with its most
prominent effects and frequent uses . But we have yet to see
it as a potent agent in several other regions. I shall speak
of it, briefly yet I hope sufficiently, as it affects the circula
tion and temperature, the mucous membranes, and the
skin ; and, lastly, shall analyse the changes it sets up in
two important spheres of its action—the urinary organs and
the eyes .
I. Belladonna, in not too excessive doses, increases the
action of the heart both in force and frequency ; so that it
cannot act only—as is alleged - by paralysing the inhibitory
fibres of the vagi, but must also stimulate the organ through
the sympathetic. Coincidently, the arteries are contracted ,
and the blood -pressure increased. These phenomena, which
I have expressed as obtained by modern experimentation,
have many prototypes in the symptoms of poisoning and
proving collected by Hahnemann . Moreover, the febrile
condition so repeatedly recorded by the latter as resulting
from the drug has now been demonstrated to be a true
Pyrexia . “ The similarity," writes Dr. Harley, “ of the
general phenomena which attend the operation of Belladonna
and those which accompany pneumonia, enteritis, the develop
ment of pus in any of the tissues and organs of the body, &c.,
arrests attention : ” and again— “ An infinitesimal quantity
of Atropia — a mere atom-as soon as it enters the blood,
originates an action which is closely allied to, if it be not
identical with , that which induces the circulatory and nervous
phenomena accompanying meningitis, enteric, or typhus
fever. " Other experimenters also have found a considerable
elevation of temperaturefrom 1 to 4 degrees centigrade
under the action of Atropia. The fever induced differs con
siderably from that of Aconite and Arsenic. The chill is
slight , and sweating is rare after the heat : the heat itself is
 BELLADONNA. 181

very decided, but is seldom accompanied with thirst, nor is

there the restless, uneasy , anxious condition especially charac
teristic of Aconite.
We of the homeopathic school have long ago drawn from
such facts the inference that Belladonna has an important
place in the treatment of the primary fevers ; and that where
pyrexia accompanies inflammation of parts which it specifi
cally irritates (as the throat) it suffices to control both the
general and the local phenomena. It is interesting to find Dr.
Harley coming to the same conclusion . He believes “ that it
has not yet attained to its legitimate place as a therapeutic
agent," and anticipates " that its sphere of usefulness will be
acknowledged before long to be coextensive with that of
acute disease itself.” If he would read Hartmann's essay ,
he would find that Belladonna had attained this its “ legiti
mate place” among those whom he stigmatises as “ blindly
led by an unscientific dogma ” at least forty years ago.
II. Together with its pyrexia, Belladonna congests the
mucous and cutaneous surfaces throughout the body . “ The
mucous membranes,” writes Dr. Meuriot, “ ten minutes after
the injection of Atropia, are red , injected, and dry.” This
seems to be the rationale of the well -known dry mouth of the
drug. It is not the mere result of diminished saliva, nor of
occluded arteries : “ the blood - vessels of the part,” says
Dr. Harley, " are congested, and the blood is arrested."
After a time, the dryness is relieved by a secretion of mucus,
foul and viscid ; and therewith the pulse falls. In fever, as
the same author states , Atropia will moisten the dry tongue ,
moderating the circulation at the same time.
This condition of mucous membrane is probably induced
by the drug throughout the body : it explains many of the
symptoms it causes, and warrants the use of the medicine in
similar dry catarrhs wherever occurring . At some points,
however, the action runs on to actual phlegmonous inflam
mation. Besides the conjunctiva (of which I shall speak
hereafter ), this condition is best seen in the throat, which is
182 BELLADONNA .

one of the cardinal centres of the action of Belladonna ,

Dryness, dysphagia, constriction, soreness, painful degluti
tion , swelling and burning are the sensations experienced
here by the subjects of its influence ; and the physical signs
of inflammation are often evident. Correspondingly, for
acute sore throat Belladonna is as complete a specific as
medicine can present. It is specially indicated where there
are much heat and pain on swallowing, bright redness of the
affected parts, flushed face, and headache. When the paren
chyma of the tonsils is involved—when we have true quinsy
-I myself prefer Baryta carbonica . But Hahnemann him
self extols Belladonna here ; and cites a case * where quinsy
supervened during the treatment of jaundice by Belladonna
whether post or propter can hardly be decided . Elsewhere
the signs of its tonsillar influence are not very prominent.
III. The skin is affected by Belladonna much as are the
mucous membranes ; it becomes dry, red, and hot. Some
times, especially in the face,t the action goes on to inflamma
tion ; and we have the condition which makes it as similar as
it is potent in the treatment of erysipelas. Every one who
has adopted this bit of homeopathy from us—from Liston
of old down to Ringer to - day - speaks highly in its praise.
Here, as in the throat, it is the smooth, tense, bright- red surface
which calls for it ; when much ædema exists, Apis is considered
preferable, and when many vesicles form , Rhus—though
Dr. Yeldham would have us rely upon Belladonna in every
variety of the disease. Boils and carbuncles, which bear so
close a relation to erysipelas, may generally be helped - the
former often blighted - by our medicine.
More commonly , the cutaneous irritation of Belladonna
resembles that of scarlatina, to which it has been compared
by many observers : it sometimes ends in desquamation.
When we consider the fever, the angina, and the delirium also .
induced by our drug, we obviously have in it aa close simile to
* S. 507.— See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi , 476.
+ Hahn . Mat. Med ., part iii, s. 424-7.
 BELLADONNA . 183

the idiopathic disease ; and for sthenic forms of scarlatina

Belladonna has from the first been our leading remedy. A
still more important property of the drug would be that
claimed for it by Hahnemann, that it acts as a temporary
prophylactic against the scarlatinal contagion. Much contro
versy has raged on this subject, and very different results
have been obtained by different experimenters. The whole
story is told in Dr Dudgeon's Lectures on Homoeopathy. I
think the conclusion must be in favour of its pretensions ;
and that we do well in administering it - according to the
custom of most homeopathists -- whenever scarlatina breaks
vut in a household . The analogy of the prophylaxis of ague
by quinine makes strongly in its favour.
Hahnemann lays much stress on its being the “ smooth "
scarlatina in which Belladonna is so potent to prevent and
cure ; disappointment, he says, has commonly proceeded from
confounding this with the rothe Friesel, which is a different
malady. It is the smooth scarlatina which we ordinarily see
in this country .
IV. I have now to speak of the action of Belladonna on the
urinary organs. Passing out with the renal secretion, it
excites the circulation of the kidneys on its way ; causing
either diuresis, or — if the dose be large -- congestion and
stasis, with diminution or even temporary suppression of
urine. It seems to be the primary or Malpighian circulation
of the kidneys which is influenced by Belladonna : there is no
reason to suppose that it has any direct action on the secreting :
cells of the convoluted tubes. Belladonna, therefore, does
not accompany the scarlatinal poison the whole length of its
course. When tubal nephritis has been set up, it cannot
neutralise the mischief ; though it may (like Terebinthina )
do good by unloading the Malpighian capillaries, and so
setting free a copious flow of urine to flush the ducts. But
if renal hyperæmia, whether from scarlatina or from cold, go
no farther than to produce defective secretion, hæmaturia, or
even albuminuria, Belladonna may be all that is required.
184 BELLADONNA .

Dr. Harley thinks highly of it in the last- named condition ;

and himself points out that the quantity of albumen is liable
to be increased “ unless the dose is a very small one.” That
is, he admits its action to be homeopathic.
Descending from the kidneys to the bladder, we find the
latter powerfully affected by Belladonna. The condition most
frequently set up is well illustrated in a case seen by Sir William
Jenner, where a Belladonna plaster had been placed on a
somewhat abraded surface of the body . Two hours after the
first appearance of the symptoms, “ he was affected with an
extreme desire to micturate, though he could pass only a few
drops of perfectly colourless urine. From this time till he
lost consciousness, his desire to pass urine was constant ;
whenever he could retire, he did so, but succeeded in expelling
from the bladder, with considerable effort, only a few drops
of colourless fluid . ” I cannot agree with Dr. Harley that this
frequent and urgent micturition is “ the result of repeated
calls to empty a distended and weakened bladder . ” It
seems to me a true strangury, by which phrase it is described
by Christison as occurring, with even bloody micturition, at
the close of poisoning cases. No spasm , indeed, is present ;
and the absence of pain forbids the supposition of inflamma
tion : but I think that irritation to no slight extent is set up.
Böcker states that the vesical mucus in the urine is increased
by Belladonna . Correspondingly, for simple irritation of the
bladder, short of actual inflammation, I know of no medicine
so valuable as Belladonna .
Of course, in thus venturing to differ from Dr. Harley as
to the ordinary action of Belladonna on the bladder, I have
no thought of denying that in large doses it may paralyse this
organ , both in its detrusor and in its sphincter fibres. I have
already ascribed to such an action its power of breaking the
habit of nocturnal incontinence of urine in children .
V. I come lastly to a very important and interesting sphere
of action of Belladonna ,--- I mean the eye. The points which
here arise for physiological discussion would occupy a lecture
 BELLA DONNA . 185

of themselves : I must sternly confine myself to a statement

of the facts and to practical conclusions.
Belladonna displays in the visual apparatus nearly all the
actions of which we have seen it possessed. It anesthetizes
the retina ; it depresses the motor oculi, and excites the sympa
thetic fibres which animate the iris ; it frets the corpora
quadrigemina to hallucinations, and inflames the conjunctiva.
Let us consider ,-first, its inflammatory effects ; secondarily,
its influence upon the pupil; thirdly, the disorder of vision
produced by it.
1. That Belladonna inflames the eye is very obvious. The
injection of the ocular membranes present during its action
is not merely symptomatic of cerebral hyperæmia, but is a
direct tissue irritation, which has often gone on to conjunc
tivitis. Evidence of a similar condition in the sclerotica, iris, and
*
eren retina, is not wanting in the pathogenesis of the drug;*
and the same may be said of the lachrymal sac and canals.t
Belladonna is, accordingly, a prime remedy in homeopathic
practice for inflammatory affections of the eyes. It is indi
cated in the severer forms of catarrhal ophthalmia, and in
strumous ophthalmia when of inflammatory type. Sense of
burning and dryness in the eyes is characteristic of it here.
I have seen it act admirably in two cases of iritis of traumatic
origin. Its use as a mydriatic in this disease is well known
and universally adopted : I am not sure but that part of the
good it does is due to its specific operation . Dr. Anstie thinks
that he has seen incipient glaucoma checked by the sub
cutaneous injection of a minute dose of Atropia in the
neighbourhood of the eye ; while several observers affirm that
its incautious use will set up this very condition. It is
suitable to retinal hyperæmia ; and even to retinitis when
acute and recent. A good cure with it of the latter affection
* Hahn . Mat. Med ., part iii, s. 472–3, 502 , 508-9, 532–4 , 538-44 .
† Ibid ., s. 449, 458.
I v. Graefe, Arch . f. O., xiv, 2. Derby, Trans. Am. Oph. Soc ., 1869.
Also Soelberg Wells.
186 BELLADONNA .

is recorded by a son of the Hartmann whose monograph on

the drug I have mentioned . *
2. The dilatation of the pupil so readily and uniformly
caused by Belladonna has long been a subject of great interest .
I have always been one of those who have maintained that the
phenomenon is due to excitation of the radiating fibres of the
iris through the sympathetic.t Dr. Harley has reinforced our
side,-advancing against the opposite hypothesis of mere
paralysis of the third nerve the very different effects of Conium
(which undoubtedly causes such paralysis) and Belladonna
on the eye. Dr. Wood, after reviewing all recent experimen
tation , concludes that here (as also in the heart and intestines )
both kinds of influence are at work—the cerebro -spinal fibres
being depressed and the sympathetic excited . But the most
important fact he brings forward is that the whole action
is a local one, even when the drug reaches the eye through
the general circulation . For thus is explained that to which
I have often called attention ,--that the dilated pupil of
Belladonna is quite unconnected with its cerebral effects,
which indeed, when occurring idiopathically, are associated
with contraction rather than expansion of the iridal aperture.
Dilated pupils, therefore, are at least no necessary homoeo
pathic indication for the use of Belladonna in cerebral dis
orders ; and often tell of aa condition of exhaustion or effusion
to which the drug is quite unsuitable. Wbile on the other
hand Graves was practising homeopathy while intending
antipathy, when he gave Belladonna in fever where a con
tracted pupil was present.
3. The impairment of vision caused by Belladonna is of two
kinds — the one inseparably connected with the mydriasis set
up, the other pointing to an influence on the retina. The
former is simply presbyopia. It is entirely the effect of the
dilatation of the pupil ; for when this is neutralised by looking
through a pinhole in a card , near vision becomes practicable
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi, 182 .
+ See ibid ., xxii, 435.
)
 BELLADONNA . 187

once more. To inability to contract the pupil, rather than to

abolition of the function of the ciliary muscle, I am inclined
to refer the " paralysis of accommodation " ascribed to Atropia
by ophthalmologists. But for this subject I must refer you
to Dr. Dudgeon's original and striking views.*
Pereira, however, is mistaken in supposing that the im
66
paired vision of Belladonna " is chiefly or entirely presbyopia."
The functions of the retina are unmistakeably affected by it.
Besides chromatopsia and photopsia, which are probably due
to the congestion we have already seen set up, we have in
several recorded instances a true amaurosis, without neces-
sarily any mydriasis.
The therapeutical inferences from these facts are obvious.

And now I must conclude. There are many more things.

I might say about Belladonna, did time permit. There are
uses of it in inflammatory toothache ; in uterine congestion
and tenesmus, and menorrhagia ; in inflammations and
neuroses of the stomach and intestines on the one hand, and
of the respiratory organs on the other, on which I should
have willingly dwelt . I should have liked, moreover, to
dwell upon its efficacy in exophthalmic goitre, a bit of practice
now gaining ground in the old school, but initiated (as Dr.
Ringer candidly admits) among homeopathists. † Analogy
and inference, however, and the detailed study of the patho
genesis, will guide you to all in good time. I would only say
one word in conclusion about
Atropia. Being unable to discover the least difference
in kind between the poisonous effects of the drug and of
this its alkaloid , I have spoken of the two interchange
ably. But I do not think we should assume the same
thing to hold good of their therapeutical effects. In all
that I have said hitherto about treatment, I have been
speaking of the administration of Belladonna. Whether
* Brit. Journ , of Hom ., xxx , 33 .
+ See Dr. Kidd's case in Brit . Journ . of Hom ., xxv, 187.
188 ATROPIA .

Atropia should ever be used in its stead has been inquired

into by the late Dr. Caspar, of Vienna .* He treated more
than a hundred cases,-at first by giving Atropia after
Belladonna, though apparently well indicated , had failed, and
afterwards, as his knowledge grew, by prescribing it in the
first instance, following it up, if ineffectual, by Belladonna.
His main conclusion is that, as a therapeutical agent, Atropia
occupies the purely neurotic sphere of Belladonna, having no
place in its tissue-irritations and vascular excitements. He
has cured with it idiopathic and post-febrile headaches of
long standing, hallucinations, epilepsy in three instances),
irritable throat and larynx, whooping-cough in the convulsive
stage, and asthma. He thinks that it has little or no action
below the diaphragm . But Dr. Kafka, after a proving of the
sixtieth of a grain of the sulphate of Atropia upon himself, was
led by the symptoms induced to give it in chronic affections
of the stomach attended with much pain and vomiting, and
with very satisfactory results. Dr. Bähr recommends it to
relieve the pain of gastric ulcer ; and in a case recently
reported from America it seems to have effected a complete
cure .

The second trituration has generally been that employed .

* See North Am. Journ . of Hom ., vi, 457.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xv, 238.
 LECTURE XI .

BERBERIS , BISMUTH , BORAX, BOVISTA , BROMINE AND

THE BROMIDES ,

I Shall begin this lecture with a sketch of the action of the

Barberry ,
Berberis vulgaris.
We make a tincture from the small branches of the root, or
the bark of the larger roots.
An excellent proving of Berberis,, made upon five persons,
mainly with infusions of the root, was published by Dr. Hesse
in the first volume of the Journal für Arzneimittellehre. Its
symptomatology is reproduced by Dr. Allen , who gives 1262
symptoms to the drug.
From some remarks of Dr. Hering's in the sixth volume
of the American Homeopathic Review ( p. 48) , we learn that
the symptoms of Berberis have led to its successful use in
several affections of the biliary and urinary tracts, and ( in
two cases) in fistula ani. Mr. Clifton has recently com
mended it to relieve pain in the passing of gall-stones, and
in hepatic congestion ;* while Dr. S. E. Newton , follow
ing up a previous experience of Dr. Lippe's, praises it in
the sufferings attendant on the passage of urinary gravel.
These actions are in perfect accordance with its pathogenesis,
which shows a marked influence on the two tracts now
specified, with alteration in their secretions. I am inclined
to think that the hepatic is the primary action ; and that the
* Monthly Hom . Rev., xii, 405.
† Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxiii, 362.
 190 BISMUTHUM .

urinary symptoms are due to a change in the renal secretion

secondary thereto, setting up irritation of the mucous mem
brane along which it passes. But, however this may be,
whenever you meet with pain, soreness, and burning in the
biliary or urinary tracts ( especially when, in the latter case,
there is much pain in the hips ), with tendency to gall-stone
and gravel, you will do well to think of Berberis.
Some attention has of late been directed to an alkaloid
found in Berberis, and present also in Hydrastis, Podophyllum ,
and Calumba, which is called Berberin . Experiments on
animals prove it a very mild poison, such symptoms as it
does produce being those of gastro -intestinal irritation .
“ Given to fowls," writes Dr. Phillips,“ in pills amounting to a
quantum of four to eight grains with each day's food, the
drug produced progressive loss of appetite, to the extent of
causing marked inanition .” These effects may throw some
light upon the “ stomachic ” virtues ascribed to Calumba ;
but they do not hint at the special virtues of Berberis.
Berberin has also been credited with anti-periodic properties,
but recent trials have resulted negatively.*
Berberis may be compared with Nux vomica and with
Сарвісит.
The dilutions from six to eighteen were used in the cases
Dr. Hering reports ; but the later experience I have mentioned
was gained with more substantial doses—Mr. Clifton getting
no good effects until he resorted to the mother -tincture.
My next medicine will be the familiar
Bismuthum .
Hahnemann called his preparation an oxide, and under this
name its symptoms appear in Allen's Encyclopædia . But II
think that if you read his directions for making it you will
agree with me that the resulting salt is identical with that
which chemists now style the subnitrate, and which is the
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxi, 190. Practitioner, xi, 333 .
 BISMUTHUM . 191

bismuth of ordinary practice. This is the conclusion also of

the British Homeopathic Pharmacopeia, which directs the
officinal subnitrate to be used, and prepared of course by
trituration .
The primary proving of Bismuth is in the sixth volume of
the Reine Armeimittellehre, where 11 symptoms are given by
Hahnemann, and 97 by three others. Some additional experi
ments with full doses are recorded by Wibmer, and given in
symptom -form by Allen .
Bismuth has long been known as a remedy for gastric pain
and vomiting. Hahnemann points out that the symptoms
obtained from it show it to be homeopathic enough to such
conditions ; and Pereira speaks to the same effect when he
says that “ in large doses it disorders the digestive organs,
causing pain , vomiting, and purging." But recent experience
with it in chronic diarrhoea , such as that of phthisis and of
unhealthy children, has elicited the fact that it may be given
in enormous doses with nothing but benefit. The conclusion
has hence been reached that the irritant effects ascribed to it
of old were due to the Arsenic so often present in it, and that
in its pure state it has no more active properties than chalk ,
and produces its good effects by a local “ sedative and desic
cant" action on the alimentary canal.
If this were so, Bismuth would lie outside the sphere of
homoeopathy. But Drs. Chapman * and Bayes have each put
on record several cases in which , from the first to the third
trituration, it proved curative in gastralgia ; and my own
experience is of the same tenor. Prepared by our processes,
therefore, Bismuth is not without dynamic action ; and Dr.
Horatio Wood shows that it is not so insoluble as is com
monly supposed. It would probably repay a more thorough
proving, directed to ascertain the precise form of gastralgia
to which it corresponds. It seems indicated when there is
sympathetic " stomach -cough," which is worse when the
stomach is empty .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom . vii,, 504.
192 BORAX .

Bismuth seems also to exert a marked action on the heart,

though here again it may have been due to Arsenic. “ Violent
beating of the heart " appears in Hahnemann's pathogenesis ;
a contracted pulse is several times noted by the provers ; and
in the post-mortem examination of the only case of poisoning
on record the inner surface of both the ventricles was found
very red . Arsenic can produce such effects,as we have seen ;
and we must not hastily use Bismuth in cardiac affections on
the strength of these observations.
Teste states that he has used the drug with brilliant results
in phlegmasia alba dolens.
Bismuth resembles, besides Arsenic, Argentum , Hydrocyanic
acid, and perhaps Zinc.
Hahnemann recommended the 2nd trituration to be used for
medicinal purposes ; and in about that strength the drug has
generally been given in homeopathic practice. Dr. Yeldham,
however, states that he has been compelled to give up all
attenuations, and resort to five - grain doses of the pure sub
stance, with which he has “ met with almost unfailing success
in that form of gastralgia to which females in particular are
liable ." *

I have again a well-known drug to bring before you in the

Sodic biborate ,

Borax.
It is prepared for homeopathic use by trituration, or
solution after 1x.
Hahnemann gave in the second edition of the Chronic
Diseases a pathogenesis of Borax, containing 460 symptoms :
nearly all of these are contributed by Dr. Schreter, and are
stated to have been observed by him on several persons.
These were evidently patients, and some of them infants, to
whom he was probably giving the medicine for thrush. Dr.
Allen adds symptoms from two other experimenters ; but
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 745, 757.
 BORAX . 193

their results are so meagre as only to afford twenty -one addi

tional symptoms.
Borax is best known as a local remedy for thrush . What
ever the rationale of its action, we cannot but continue to
employ a medication so simple and so effectual. Yet it is of
interest to inquire whether there is anything specific in the
practice, and anything which illustrates the homeopathic
method . At first sight Hahnemann's pathogenesis would
seem to show that Borax can produce thrush. “ Aphthæ in
the mouth ,99" 66 an aphtha inside the cheek, which bleeds when
eating," " an aphtha on the tongue " —these symptoms from
Schreter should be proof positive of homeopathicity. But
when we examine them closer, we find that they occurred from
four to five weeks after the administration of the drug.
Better evidence than this must therefore be given, ere we can
affirm the thrush - producing power of Borax. At the same
time there can be no doubt that small doses - say grains of
the first trituration - given internally will cure the disease
nearly, if not quite, as rapidly as when it is applied locally,
a fact which speaks strongly in favour of the dynamic action
of the medicine .
However this may be, the local use of Borax in aphthous
and also in pruriginous affections is of undoubted value. To
these its employment is at the present day well- nigh entirely
restricted . But in old times it was , as Pereira says, regarded
as an agent exercising a specific influence over the uterus ;
promoting menstruation, alleviating the pain which sometimes
attends this process, facilitating parturition, diminishing the
pain of accouchement, and favouring the expulsion of the
placenta and lochia . ” This use of the drug has been con
tinued in the homeopathic school. Schreter speaks of easy
conception having been observed in five women under its use ;
and mentions one case where a woman who had been sterile
fourteen years on account of an acrid leucorrhæa, after other
remedies at last took Borax, whereupon she became pregnant,
and the leucorrhæa improved. Dr. E. M. Hale has put on
13
194 BOVISTA .

record a case of membranous dysmenorrhæa radically cured

by it.* This piece of practice, however, is not af homeopathic
origin ; for the physician who first recorded the successful use
of the remedy was Dr. Henry Bennet. >
Dr. Guernsey states that “fear of downward motion ” is an
especial characteristic for Borax.
Dr. Hale gave five -grain doses of the pure substance ; and
neither for the uterus nor for the mouth does Borax seem to
need much dilution .

My next medicine is probably known to you by its poisonous

effects only. It is the " puff -ball," Lycoperdon
Bovista .
It is prepared by trituration .
Bovista was proved by Nenning and two others; 640 sym
ptoms from this source appear in Hartlaub and Trinks' Arznei
mittellehre. It was little used in practice until attention was
called to it by Petroz in the fourth volume of the Journal de
la Société Gallicane. The additional observations he com
municates are combined with those of Hartlaub and Trinks
by Allen.
The puff - ball has been found by Dr. Benjamin Richardson
to be capable of producing anesthesia in animals exposed to
the fumes of its combustion . This anæsthesia is of the nature
of asphyxia, like that of nitrous oxide ; it is not of the chloro
form character. Petroz, finding a similar condition set up
from simple olfaction of the mother -tincture, was led to
administer it in a serious case of asphyxia. He does not relate
the circumstances, but says that the remedy was given with
great success. His experimenters, and those who took part in
the German proving, experienced great pain and heaviness in
the head. Their symptoms should be carefully studied in Dr.
Allen's arrangement, and may lead to valuable results. Teste
(who has a good article on the drug) says that it is especially
* Brit. Journ . of Hon., xxix , 746 .
 BROMIUM . 195

indicated by a sensation as if the head were swelling up to a

great size.
But the chief use of Bovista is in the cutaneous sphere.
The skin appears in the proving as much affected with itching
pimples ; and Dr. Guernsey speaks of " tettery ” persons as
special subjects of its beneficial use. It is said to be indicated
when the irritation is brought on by washing. Drs. Frédault
and Guerin -Ménéville commend it in the eczema of the back
of the hands known as bakers' and grocers' itch .
Bovista is classed by Teste with Sulphur, Asterias, and
Cicuta .
The medium dilutions have been those hitherto used.

I now come to the piéce de résistance of this lecture, in the

shape of a discussion of the action of Bromine and its com
pounds. And, first, of
Bromium
itself.
An alcoholic solution is directed by the Pharmacopoeia .
But, as Bromic acid soon forms in such a preparation, it
seems better to keep the Bromine pure, and dilute it with
distilled water when required for use.
In the second volume of the Neues Archiv Dr. Hering
published a pathogenesis of Bromine. The symptoms sup
plied by himself and his fellow -provers were mainly obtained
from the 30th dilution ; but some are taken from observers
who used material doses. The experiments of Höring,
Butzke, and Heiemdringer --which are of this character-are
given by Frank (i , 386) , and should be consulted ; as also
should be a Harveian prize essay on the subject by Dr.
Glover, published in the fifty - eighth volume of the Edinburgh
Medical and Surgical Journal. The symptoms from these and
other sources, as collected by Dr. Allen, amount to 821 in all .
Some additional memoirs on Bromine are mentioned by
Dr. Ozanam in the brochure to which I shall refer, and may
196 BROMIUM .

be referred to by those desiring further knowledge of the

drug.
The results of all these investigations are but scanty.
Bromine is unquestionably a powerful irritant; more so (Dr.
Glover says) when diluted than when pure. Hence it inflames.
every mucous membrane with which it comes in contact.
Being very volatile, moreover, its exhalations ascend from
the stomach after it is swallowed ; so that the coryza and
salivation it provokes may not be more than local effects.
Nevertheless as, even when injected into the veins, it sets up
inflammation of the lungs and air-passages, we may fairly
credit it with a specific influence on the respiratory organs ;
and these have been the main sphere of its homeopathic use.
The rigors and prostration which accompanied its coryza in
one of Glover's dogs suggest it in influenza. Since in
Höring it caused difficult and painful inspirations, violent
stitches in the lungs, and cough on attempting to draw a
long breath, it ought to find a place in the treatment of
pneumonia ; in which indeed, and in phthisis, Dr. C. Hering
praises it. I often find it useful in dry laryngo-tracheal
coughs, with hoarseness, and pain and burning behind the
sternum. But its chief credit has been gained in the treat
ment of membranous croup, of which there are numerous
instances on record in which it effected a cure . * As it
usually came in to reinforce the ordinary remedies, the cases
in which it was employed were severe and advanced ; so that
its potency is the more established . The last of the reports
indicated in the note comes from Dr. Meyhoffer, who in a
very able way discusses the precise place of Bromine in the
therapeutics of this disease . He points to the prostration
manifest in its poisonous effects; and decides that it is in
extension of diphtheria to the air- passages that it is indicated,
while Iodine -- whose primary constitutional action is excitant
-is better suited to what is distinguished as true croup . He
* North Amer. Journ. of Hom ., x, 296. Philad . Journ. of Hom ., i, 529 ;
ii, 74, 565. Brit. Journ . ofHom ., xxiv, 625.
 BROMIUM . 197

does not, however, admit an essential, but only a phenomenal,

difference between the two diseases ; and the whole tendency
of medical opinion is now in this direction .
Dr. Ozanam , of Paris, assuming this doctrine (which has
always been held by French pathologists ), has published
several interesting observations on the use of Bromine in
croup and diphtheria, which are summed up in a short
treatise on the subject dated 1869.* He has ascertained that
an aqueous solution of Bromine, of the strength of one part
in a thousand, disintegrates a false membrane in an hour.
He then points to the elective action of the drug on the air
passages, and also (as he thinks) on the throat ; and to its
property, when inhaled by animals, of determining the forma
tion of false membranes on these parts. He finally advances
its power - equal to that of Chlorine — of destroying conta
gious germs; and concludes that on every ground it ought to
be a prime remedy for diphtheritic affections. He himself
has found it to be so. His first success was obtained in
1849, and since then he has treated some 150 cases, with the
loss of only five, all of which were croupous. He gives every
hour one or two drops (in eau sucrée for children) of a
freshly prepared aqueous dilution of 3x strength , and adds
inhalations of a weak solution . Of late he has found a
combination of Bromine and Kali bromidum - bromure de
potassium bromé - still more efficient, both chemically and
clinically .
Other authors are cited by Dr. Ozanam as confirming his
results; and I should have mentioned that Dr. Meyhoffer
speaks of having treated twenty cases successfully with
Bromine alone, where diphtheritic exudation in throat or
larynx was accompanied by great prostration . Dr. Kafka
has communicated to this year's (1875) Allgemeine homöo
pathische Zeitung a severe case of membranous croup in which
* Mémoire sur les dissolvants et les désagrégeants des produits pseudo
membraneur, et sur l'emploi du Brome dans les affections pseudo-mem
braneuses ( Baillière).
198 BROMIUM .

inhalations of Bromine (1st and 2nd decimal on cotton wool)

had aa most beneficial effect.
Besides its use in croup, Bromine has retained among
homoeopathists the place it has lost in the old school as a
reducer of enlarged lymphatic glands. Dr. Goullon , in his
excellent treatise on scrofula, gives several instances of cure
of strumous glands by means of it.
Some curious sensations in the extremities are related by
Trousseau and Pidoux to bave been caused by Bromine when
administered by Andral to a number of sufferers from
arthritis . But, as these phenomena are quite unique, and
were accompanied by great diminution of their pains, I think
they must have depended on the morbid state of the patients,
and cannot be used as homeopathic indications.
The chief analogue of Bromine is Iodine, as compared with
which , however, it has a very limited sphere.
In croup Bromine has been usually given in about
the 3rd decimal dilution , in strumous glands in the 3rd
centesimal.

Having spoken of Bromine itself, it becomes necessary to

inquire into its action when in combination with an alkali.
This, as in the case of Iodine, at once gives it other features
and a new range of action. Let us speak of the Bromide of
Potassium ,
Kali bromidum . — The history of this substance is a curious
one .It was first used as an analogue of the Iodide of the
same metal, and introduced into the Pharmacopoeia on the
strength of the virtues ascribed to it by Dr. Robert Williams
in chronic enlargements of the spleen. Its repute here soon
waned, and it ceased to be officinal. In 1853 Dr. (now Sir
Charles) Locock called attention to its powers of checking
epileptic fits dependent upon irritations of the female sexual
organs. It was soon found that epilepsies from other causes
were amenable to its influence ; and it rapidly acquired.
-at least in this country, in France, and in America
 BROMIUM . 199

an estimation as an anti-epileptic far excelling all other

remedies now in use , and capable of doing more for the
disease than had ever been done or hoped for hitherto. “ It
has changed , ” Dr. Anstie quotes an eminent authority as
saying, “ the whole prognostic significance of epileptic
attacks. "
" Like that of all other drugs,” writes Sir Thomas Watson,
" its special virtue was discovered empirically, and could never
have been reasoned out.” But, attention being once directed
to it, experimentation as to its physiological effects followed .
Conducted in the usual gross way, and on the lower animals
only, this seemed to prove Kali bromidum a pure sedative to
nervous tissue, and it was used accordingly in every kind of
irritation of brain, cord , and nerves. Disappointment
naturally followed, and the employment of the drug is now,
by good judges, restricted to true convulsions recurring
paroxysmally, excluding all habitual spasms. As Dr. Ringer
says : - “ although convulsions may be excited by many causes,
it is probable that the conditions of the nervous centres pro
ducing the attack are in every instance identical ; and it
appears to be these conditions which the Bromide controls.”
At the same time, more careful reading of the physiolo
gical effects showed that it was the reflex function of the
Hervous centres —— the “ true spinal cord ” of Marshall Hall
-to which the Bromide so readily acted as a sedative : sen
sation and voluntary motion were only affected by toxic
quantities.
As checking convulsions, then, by deadening reflex ex
citability, Bromide of Potassium has taken its place in general
therapeutics ; and we of the school of Hahnemann have had
to consider what to do with it. Our power over convulsive
affections — especially over epilepsy-is not so great as to
make us independent of further aidl ; and the mere fact that
we have here to do with an antipathic action would not keep
us from Kali bromidum any more than from Amyl nitrite.
But palliation of paroxysms, as with the latter, is a very
200 BROMIUM .

different thing from their suspension by the continued use

of the drug.. Here the vices of antipathic medication become
manifest. It is allowed that epilepsy is seldom or never
“ cured ” by the Bromide , so that the patient remains free
from it after ceasing to take the drug ; it is only kept in
check while he remai under its influence. For this purpose ,
moreover, it is necessary to take large and frequent doses , so
that the blood be kept constantly charged with it, and the
nervous system never free from the sedation it causes . Even
then it is confessed that it oftentimes loses its power through
habituation of the tissue to its action, and has to be sus
pended for a time, at the risk of the paroxysms returning, so
as to start afresh on its work .
Before committing our patients to such a course of treat
ment, it is necessary to inquire whether no harm results to
the organism at large from this constant saturation with a
medicinal agent ; whether, in fact, the remedy is not worse
than the disease. The phenomena of “ bromism ” are now
well known . I will cite Dr. Bazire's description of them as
they appear in the nervous centres.*
“ When given in large doses, such as thirty and forty
grains two or three times a day, it produces very striking
symptoms in about ten or fifteen days. The patient at first
complains of a dull headache, becomes listless and apathetic,
with an expressionless gaze and aa lustreless eye. His intellect
is clouded, his mind confused, and he is unable to concentrate
his thoughts. There is slowness of perception, and questions
have to be asked several times before their meaning is under
stood and an answer can be obtained . If, when these
symptoms have begun to show themselves, the medicine be
continued , hebetude follows, with inability to think , and a
kind of stupor resembling that of the first stage of typhoid
fever, together with drowsiness, somnolence, and constant
dropping off to sleep. The pupils are dilated, and contract
See his translation of Trousseau's Clinical Lectures, vol . i.
 BROMIUM . 201

very sluggishly under the influence of a strong light ; the

sensibility of the conjunctiva is so deadened that a finger may
be passed with impunity on the surface of the eyeball without
producing winking. Hearing loses its usual acuteness, and
it is only by speaking in a very loud voice that the patient
can be aroused from his stupor.
“ The sense of taste is probably impaired like those of
hearing and of sight. The tongue is moist and red at first,
but after a few days it has a tendency to drying and
browning. There is anæsthesia of the velum palati, the
uvula and upper portion of the pharynx, so that these parts
may be tickled without producing nausea or involuntary
movements of deglutition. Swallowing itself, however, is
unimpaired , and strangely enough the appetite remains very
good ; the patient takes his food well, and dozes off imme.
diately after. Digestion seems to be easy, and the bowels,
although sluggish in their action, are not very confined .
There is intense thirst, and a craving for cold drinks. The
anæsthesia is not confined to the mucous membranes only,
for the sensibility of the skin is diminished also , so that
pinching and pricking are scarcely noticed by the patient.
From the beginning, the sexual aptitude fails ; erections
become rare and imperfect, and cease entirely after a few
days.
“ Simultaneously with the impairment of sensibility, dis
orders of motility manifest themselves. Thus, the patient
is averse to taking exercise, sits and lounges about ; by
degrees, his gait becomes altered, he rolls and staggers like
a drunken man , his limbs shake and bend under him.
After a time, he is obliged to keep to his bed , and when he
uses his hands, as in the act of carrying anything to his
mouth, they are seen to tremble, as if he were suffering from
delirium tremens. The respiration is calm and tranquil,
with occasional sighing. The circulation is considerably
slackened ; the pulse at the wrist is weak and slow ; the
heart's beat lacking in energy, and its sounds distant and
>
202 BROMIUM .

feeble ; in fact, in its effect on the heart, Bromide of Potas

sium seems to resemble Digitalis. If the drug be withheld ,
these symptoms gradually diminish and pass off of them
selves, but they leave behind them for some time afterwards
great feebleness, both physical and mental. The anæs
thesia of the fauces seems to be the last phenomenon to
disappear."
To these effects, sufficiently undesirable, must be added the
well-known acne of the drug, whose pustules sometimes
become boils, and end in large ulcers with conical scabs like
rupia. I may also cite Dr. Clarke's* description of the
symptoms of a toxic dose, which, as he says, “ are only an
increase or an exaggeration of those of a therapeutic one."
“ The fætid breath becomes nauseous ; ædema supervenes on
congestion of the uvula and fauces ; the whispering voice
sinks into aphonia ; sexual weakness degenerates into impo
tence ; muscularweakness becomes complete paralysis ; reflex,
general, and special sensibility disappears ; the ears do not
hear, nor the eyes see, nor the tongue taste ; the expression
of hebetude becomes first that of imbecility, and then that of
idiocy ; hallucinations of sight and sound, with or without
mania, precede general cerebral indifference, apathy, and
paralysis ; the respiration, without the stertor of Opium or
Alcohol, is easy but slow ; the temperature of the body is
lowered. As the bromism becomes more profound, the
patient lies quietly on his bed, unable to move, or feel, or
swallow, or speak, with dilated and uncontractile pupils, and
scarcely any change of the colour of the skin or face ; the
extremities grow gradually colder and colder ; the action of
the heart becomes feebler and slower, till it ceases alto
gether."
I confess that my own decision is against the bromidal
treatment of epileptic and other convulsions, save when from
their frequency they are threatening life or reason , and when
* Abstract of the Physiological and Therapeutical Action of Bromide
of Potassium , by Drs. E. H. Clarke and R. Amory . Boston, 1872.
 BROMIUM . 203

careful homeopathic medication has failed. I think, more

over, that herein I am expressing the mind of most prac
titioners of our school. But we may here be positively as
well as negatively consistent with our principles, and find in
the phenomena of bromism indications for the use of the
drug according to the law of similars. This has already been
done for us in several instances.
1. The acne of Kali bromidum was first noticed by Höring,
of whose experiments with Bromine I have already spoken .
It became in his case — as not unfrequently — a crop of boils .
It is common, but not constant — Dr. Clarke observing it in
two thirds of the cases treated by him with continuous doses ;
and it is not, as Dr. Russell Reynolds says, determined by the
quantity of Bromide that is taken . He has seen it follow a
few five - grain doses, and it has been absent in many cases
where thirty grains have been taken, three times daily, for
periods of six or even of twelve months . It sometimes results in
suppuration : sometimes the pustules die away without going
through this process . Its favourite seats are the face, scalp,
and back .
Here is a suitable starting- point for homeopathic medi
cation ; and Dr. Drysdale states that he has more than once
cured such an acne with two- or three-grain doses of Kali
bromidum . But he had been anticipated in his statement
by a practitioner of the old school, Dr. Cholmeley. He states
that he has seen an obstinate, long - continued acne disappear
entirely while Bromide of Potassium was being taken for a
nervous disorder. *
2. Kali bromidum has an unquestionable soporific effect,
and is in large use as a hypnotic, though opinions seem much
divided as to its certainty. It concerns us little in this
capacity ; but we read with much interest the description of
the kind of sopor induced given by M. Laborde from obser
vations made on himself . " It is,” he says,† “ a state of heavy
* Med . Times and Gaz., Dec. 11th, 1869.
+ See Practitioner, xii , 9.
204 BROMIUM .

somnolence ; it is often suddenly interrupted, although there

are, properly speaking, no dreams, or no dreams that take a
definite shape ; it is rather a nightmare, and an indefinite
one. Waking is accomplished with great difficulty .” The
indications for the drug in certain morbid conditions of sleep
are obvious ; and we have the encouragement of Dr. Ringer,
who finds it very useful in the night- screaming and somnam
bulism of children , and the nightmare of adults. We may
remember, too, the connection between too profound sleep and
nocturnal enuresis.
3. According to physiological experimenters, Bromide of
Potassium acts strongly on the vaso -motor nerves, constricting
(at least at first) the arterioles. They maintain that it is in
virtue of this power that it proves sedative to the nervous
centres generally. Dr. Russell Reynolds, however, takes
just the opposite view , considering that it acts upon the vaso
2
motor system as a “ sedative,” i.e. that it reduces such morbid
activity as would lead to the spasmodic narrowing of vessels,
and the consequent induction of irregularity in the supply
of blood . He commends it accordingly in disturbances of
this system elsewhere than in the head, and finds ten- or even
five - grain doses sufficient for their removal.
4. We shall probably find a place for Kali bromidum in
some paralytic conditions, as tabes dorsalis from sexual
excess, idiopathic aphasia , and simple dementia . Two local
paralyses are mentioned as having been cured by it - dys
phagia of liquids in infants by Dr. Ringer (I have had the
same experience once myself), and incontinence of urine by
Dr. Warburton Begbie.*** The latter has been caused by the
drug.
There are a good many other points of interest about Bro
mide of Potassium ; but I cannot do more than indicate them.
There is the question of the source of its efficacy, whether
this be from its Bromine, as maintained by Dr. Richardson ,

* Practitioner , xii, 98.

 BROMIUM . 205

or from its Potassium , as suggested by Professor Binz, or

whether (as Dr. R. Reynolds thinks) it is a tertium quid distinct
from either. Then there is its action on the sexual organs,
whose activity it seems — in large doses — to diminish even to
abolition : this being due, according to some observers, to a
local action on the extremities of the excitor nerves ; according
to others, to its depressing influence on the spinal cord. Dr.
Anstie thought much of it in insomnia, and even neuralgia ,
from sexual worry ; and it seems effective in nymphomania.
This, of course, belongs to its antipathic action ; for I do not
think we can make capital out of the single observation of
Laborde in which sexual excitement seemed to follow upon its
use. But it is here, perhaps, that I must mention the action
of the drug on ovarian cysts. A case of this kind is recorded
in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for 1868, in which, after a
single tapping, the continuous use of the Bromide, in doses
of five, ten, and fifteen grains, effected a complete cure. In
the twenty -seventh volume of the British Journal of Homeo
pathy Dr. Black records an equally satisfactory case, where
grain doses sufficed for the cure ; and in the twenty -eighth
volume you may read one of my own . There is much
encouragement here for future trials.
 LECTURE XII .

BRYONIA - CACTUS .

I Begin this lecture with a medicine which, more than any

one which has yet come before us, therapeutics owe to Hahne
mann . I speak of
Bryonia .
A tincture of the root of the Bryonia alba is the ordinary
homeopathic preparation ; but the British Homeopathic
Pharmacopæia allows the Bryonia dioica to be substituted .
Mr. Turner tells me that now and then the Tamus communis
is brought to chemists by mistake for the Bryony - root, and
might be incautiously used by them .
Bryonia was early proved by Hahnemann : the pathogenesis
occurs in the second volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It
consists of 781 symptoms, two thirds of which are contributed
by the master himself, and the rest by six fellow -provers. It
was also one of the medicines selected for re-proving by the
Austrian Society. Their results are published in the third
volume of the Oesterreichische Zeitschrift; and the experiments
on animals which form an element of them have been
translated for the British Journal of Homeopathy (vol . xxv) .
Eighteen persons took part in the proving, two of whom
were females ; and nearly all employed increasing doses of the
mother-tincture. The symptoms obtained are amalgamated
with Hahnemann's by Dr. Allen, forming a total of nearly
two thousand. There are two interesting studies of Bryonia
which I may commend to your notice, -- the one by Dr.
Hirschel, in that part of his Pharmacodynamics which has
 BRYONIA . 207

been translated by Dr. Hayle ; the other by Dr. Carroll

Dunham, in the sixth volume of the American Homeopathic
Review .
As Bryonia will be a new medicine to most of my hearers,
I must detail its pathogenetic effects with some minuteness .
Bryonia is a pure irritant. It has no neurotic or hæmatic
power ; but sets up inflammation — locally, wherever it is
applied, specifically, in the serous membranes and the chief
viscera they contain, some of the mucous membranes, and the
muscles.
I. No poison (not even Aconite or Arsenic) affects the
gerous membranes so certainly and powerfully as Bryonia. If
you will read the autopsies of the animals poisoned at Vienna,
this fact will abundantly appear. In the first the pleuræ were
injected and full of serum , and the peritoneum and arachnoid
injected ; in the second, third and fifth the arachnoid only
was reddened ; but in the sixth the pleura were as in the first,
and the pericardial vessels were injected. Correspondingly,
the provers have the characteristic pleuritic pains with fever :
and although the symptoms of the head, heart, and abdomen
are undecisive, they at least do not forbid the supposition of
an affection of their respective serous membranes. Moreover,
the synovial membranes,
those close allies of the serous sacs-
which are more easily affected by drug action, give plain
indication of suffering from Bryony. The joints swell and
become tender, especially those of the fingers.
Since all the parenchymatous organs influenced by Bryonia
are enclosed in serous membrane, I have often tried to account
for their symptoms by the primary action of the drug on the
investing tissue. I cannot, however, ask you to accept this
doctrine at present. I must describe the effects on the viscera
as they exist, and their relation to the disorder of their
envelopes for further investigation .
1. It is curious, nevertheless, that as of all the serous mem
branes the pleuræ are those most readily influenced by Bryonia ,
80 of all the viscera the lungs are those which suffer most
208 BRYONIA .

from its action. The short, quick, and oppressed breathing,

with heat and pain in the chest, experienced by the provers
finds its interpretation in the phenomena presented by the
poisoned animals. In these, with similar symptoms during
life, the lungs were always of deeper colour and diminished
crepitation, while in two the lower lobes were hepatized .
2. Next to the lungs, the brain is the organ which shows
most signs of being affected by Bryonia . There is no perver
sion of the sensorial functions, as with Belladonna : and the
determination of blood does not pass beyond the stage of
congestion. But up to this point it is very well marked ; and
the provers get a hot and red face, with headache (generally
frontal), sense of weight and fulness, and vertigo. Epistaxis
also is frequent.
3. Of the two chief viscera enfolded by the peritoneum, the
liver is much more affected by Bryonia than the kidneys . It
causes tensive and burning pain in the hepatic region, which is
sometimes also sensitive to pressure. In one prover, the
skin over the whole body became yellowish . In the animals
the liver was always found gorged, and sometimes friable.
In two animals the kidneys also were found congested : but I
think the scanty, hot, and high -coloured urine so often passed
by the Austrian provers a symptom of general fever rather
than of renal implication.
II. I come now to the action of Bryonia on the mucous
membranes. It is interesting to observe ( in connection with
its relation to the rheumatic poison) how much less power
fully it influences these than it does the serous and synovial
membranes. It is an acrid, and hence large doses cannot but
irritate the alimentary membrane as they go down. Accord
ingly, we have in the provers sore throat, vomiting, and
diarrhæa with colic and flatulence ; and in the animals an
aphthous mouth, and ulcers in the stomach and intestines.
But the essential phenomena of Bryony in the gastro -intes
tinal sphere do not seem to depend upon irritation of the
mucous membrane. They are water-brash (with this there is
 BRYONIA . 209

the characteristic contractive pain at the lower end of the

@sophagus), bitter risings and vomitings, pressure on the
stomach, feeling of load as if a stone were there, and consti
pation. These await their physiological expression ; but
they have received , as we shall see, their full therapeutic
application.
The respiratory mucous membrane is unquestionably affected
by Bryonia, though I doubt whether the irritation extends
lower than the first division of the bronchi. The symptoms
of the provers (pain, cough, & c.), whenever localised, are
referred to the trachea and its bifurcation ; and these parts
-only were found injected in the poisoned animals. The
pneumonia set up by Bryony was never associated with bron
chitis, in this strikingly different from that of Tartar emetic
and Phosphorus. If Bryonia causes any nasal catarrh, it is
dry ; and the cough also has little expectoration, and is con
tinuous, irritating, and violent, often causing retching and
pains in the walls of the chest. Of late, our knowledge of the
action of Bryony on the air -tubes has received a novel exten
sion from an experiment of M. Curie's.* By administering
to a rabbit gradually increasing doses of Bryonia during eight
months till he came to 250 drops of the mother -tincture daily,
he developed in the animal a firm pseudo -membranous tube,
extending from the larynx to the third ramifications of the
bronchiæ . While this fact is of great interest, I do not think
it proves that the action of Bryonia on the air-passages is
either profound or extensive. Pseudo -membranous formation
on their surface is a pathological fact per se : and has no
necessary relation to the amount of affection of the subjacent
mucous membrane.
Upon the urinary mucous membrane I should have said
that Bryony had little or no action , but that several of the
provers experienced considerable vesical tenesmus, with a
feeling after micturition as though all the urine had not been
expelled.
* See Brit . Journ . of Hom ., xix , 415 .
14
210 BRYONIA.

III . In one of the animals poisoned with Bryony at Vienna ,

where aa very minute autopsy was made by a practised patho
logist, it is noted that the substance of the heart and the
muscles of the neck were intensely red. Putting this together
with the soreness and pain on motion experienced by the
provers in so many parts of the body, even to the production
of pleurodynia and lumbago, I venture to set down our drug
as a specific irritant of muscular fibre. As we have no other
medicine with such an action , we must not lose even the hint
of it supplied by these facts .
Under these headings I have given you the main pathoge
netic effects of Bryonia. I have only to add that in the
female provers the menstruation was premature and exces
sive ; and that in all febrile symptoms were frequent .
Let us now inquire what have been the clinical results of
these very extensive provings.
To Bryonia, as to all the great Hahnemannian medicines, a
special constitution and disposition has been assigned as that
to which it is most suitable. It is said to act best in persons
of firm and fleshy fibre, of dark hair and complexion , of
“ bilious " tendency and choleric temperament, and where much
irritability is present. You must not lay too much stress on
such indications ; nevertheless, they sometimes guide us to
the true remedy .
I shall begin by characterising the relation of Bryonia to
the two great types of fever, the rheumatic and the typhous.
I. After Aconite, Bryonia is incomparably the best remedy
for acute rheumatism . In its whole pathogenetic action it
reminds one of the rheumatic poison. Its feeble affinity for
skin and mucous membrane, and its powerful influence over
serous and synovial membrane and muscular fibre, with its
fever and sour sweats, point unmistakeably to this disease .
Accordingly, most of us employ it throughout rheumatic
fever, generally in alternation with Aconite, unless the sym.
ptoms call urgently for some other medicine. But we need a
series of comparative experiments which shall demonstrate
 BRYONIA . 211

what part the Aconite and what the Bryonia takes in con
trolling the disease. Bryonia appears equally suitable for
articular and for muscular rheumatism : it is least fitted for
affection of the fibrous tissues proper. It continues, of course ,
to be a homeopathic remedy when any of the serous mem
branes are inflamed in the course of rheumatic fever : though
it may yield in importance to some other medicines . It is a
capital remedy for rheumatism attacking particular muscles,
as those of the loins or neck, or the diaphragm . In chronic
rheumatism it is specially indicated when the pain is increased
by motion, i.e. when the affection is sub -inflammatory in
character.
II. Hahnemann used Bryonia with great success in many
cases of the fever which ravaged Germany while it was the
seat of war in 1813. The medicine has hence acquired a
large reputation in the treatment of the essential fevers. The
head symptoms and the bilious disturbance of Bryonia fre
quently find their antitypes here : and Hahnemann's patho
genesis adds the dry mouth and tongue and the nocturnal
delirium . One of his symptoms, indeed, if well authenticated,
is a perfect picture of low fever : “ she sleeps the whole day,
with dry great heat, without eating or drinking, with twitch
ings in the face ; she has six involuntary passages, the stools
being brown and smelling badly.” — Nosologically, Bryonia is
especially suitable for relapsing fever. Dr. Kidd, who saw so
much of this malady in Ireland in 1847, considers Bryony the
best medicine for it . * Its place in typhus and typhoid is more
difficult to determine. There seems a general concurrence
among the older homeopathists as to its power of modifying
favourably the erethism of the first stage of " typhus abdo
minalis,” our enteric fever ; and Trinks even claims for it the
virtue we have seen in Baptisia - of aborting the disease.
He commends it also for the rheumatic pains and the bron
chitis which occasionally complicate the course of fever.
* Annals, iv, 181 .
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxix, 303.
212 BRYONIA .

III. I will now speak of the power of Bryonia in affections

of the serous membranes, and of the viscera which they
enclose.
Dr. Trinks, than whom we have had no better practical
physician among us, thus characterises the place of Bryonia
in serous inflammations. * “ From no small number of cases
which I have carefully marked down, the fact comes out that
Bryonia is the sovereign remedy in all inflammations of the
serous membranes which have advanced to the stage of serous
effusion. This action of Bryonia extends all over the serous
membranes which cover the thorax and abdomen, and the
organs situated in these cavities, and which are so often
attacked by inflammation.
“ As long as the local inflammatory condition had not
reached this stage, the fever being still of a sharp, well
pronounced synochal character, the Bryonia was of no use, but
at this time Aconite and Belladonna were the specific medi
cines which arrested the inflammation before it had been
developed to the stage just specified. But when on the other
hand the inflammation had advanced to the stage of serous
exudation, then in all cases Bryonia showed itself a medicine
of quick and certain operation, which not only removed the
still-existing local inflammation, but also with the least
possible delay effected the absorption of the serous effusion
which had already taken place.
“ I find in my journal many cases of inflammation of the
pleura , as they occur very frequently in Dresden in the
beginning and end of winter, during the prevalence of strong
east and north -east winds, in persons disposed to tubercular
phthisis ; then two cases of inflammation of the pericardium
with serous exudation ; and two very noteworthy cases of
inflammation of the peritoneum, with very copious effusion
of serum into the abdominal cavity.”
These doctrines of Dr. Trinks' about the place of Bryonia
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom., viii, 482.
 BRYONIA . 213

in inflammations of serous membranes have been confirmed by

all subsequent observers. Aconite should be given at first,
and continued (with aid from Sulphur) should the exudation
be plastic : but if serous effusion occur, its place must be
taken by Bryonia. It is especially in pleurisy that this treat
ment has become accepted. You will find some good cases
illustrative of it by the late Dr. Beilby, of Glasgow, in the
tenth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. For
pericarditis you should read Dr. Russell's Clinical Lectures. I
myself greatly prefer in this disease Aconite or Colchicum .
In peritonitis from exposure to cold I have seen Bryonia act
exceedingly well after Aconite : there are two capital cases
:

in Trinks' paper . It is recommended also for the puerperal

form of this disease. Arachnitis is the only form of serous
inflammation in which Bryonia has not proved curative : but
since this malady is generally tubercular, the failure of any
given medicine to cure it reflects no discredit on the remedy.
In non -tubercular cases it would probably repay the confidence
which is generally placed in it.
Of the viscera enveloped by the serous membranes I shall
only speak here of the brain , as the lungs and liver will come
in under the head of the respiratory and digestive organs
respectively. Bryonia is of great value in simple non -inflam
matory congestion of this organ. Cases are on record in which
such a condition arising from suppressed menstruation , from
exposure to intense cold, and from sea-sickness with long
lasting constipation, was promptly dissipated by the medicine .
It is also frequently useful in congestive headaches, which are
seated in the forehead, relieved by pressure, and much
increased by stooping, which causes a sensation as if the brain
would fall out. If - as it often is - giddiness is present, the
patient feels as though he would pitch forwards. Another
kind of headache for which Bryonia is useful is a form of
hemicrania :: the pain is generally on the right side, and is
accompanied by retching and bilious vomiting.
Before leaving the serous membranes, I must refer to their
214 BRYONIA .

synovial analogues ; only to say, however, that Bryonia has

proved as useful in idiopathic synovitis — when caused by cold
or injury — as when the affection is the local manifestation of
rheumatism .
IV . I have now to speak of the power of Bryonia over
affections of the digestive organs. The form of dyspepsia for
which it is suitable is again most excellently described by Dr.
Trinks. “The pressure on the stomach , a much more frequent
affection in the female than in the male, generally caused by
irregularity in diet, eating indigestible food, bread not enough
baked, coffee, brandy, or bad beer, finds for the most part its
radical cure in Bryonia . It comes on when the stomach is
empty as well as when it is full,but more frequently immediately
after it has been emptied of its contents : the patients complain
of a pressure at the pit of the stomach, as if they felt a heavy
annoying stone there ; it lasts from two to four hours, some
times longer, and goes off with much eructation. In worse
cases, the so -called water- brash is an accompaniment, or there
is a great deal of acidity generated, which shows itself by sour
risings, heartburn, and vomiting of a very sour and acrid
mucus . In the severer degrees of this pain of stomach , the
epigastrium becomes extremely sensitive to external touch and
pressure, and the patient cannot bear the clothes to be firmly
put on . ” Teste notes also of the Bryony dyspepsia , that beer
disagrees or gives no satisfaction to thirst, and that water is
absolutely required as a dissolvent. As with Nux vomica and
Lycopodium , gastric degeneration requiring Bryony is gene
rally accompanied by constipation . But whether for this
malady occurring independently it is ever better than the
other inore important medicines we have, I cannot say .
Hahnemann ranks it with Nux vomica and Opium. Dr. C.
Dunham considers that Bryonia is specially adapted to torpor
of the bowels, as distinguished from the ineffectual urging of
Nux vomica. Dr. Bayes recommends it in the constipation of
children, where the fæces are so large and hard as to cause
pain in passing. The diarrhæa of Bryonia also must not be
 BRYONIA . 215

forgotten as a possible indication for its therapeutic use. I

have heard of its doing much in America for cholera in
fantum .
In affections of the liver Bryonia frequently comes into
play, often in association with Mercurius. It hardly reaches
to true hepatitis ; but in congestive states of the organ ,, with
pain in the right shoulder, giddiness, and slight yellowness of
the skin and eyes, it is very useful.
V. We come now to the action of Bryonia in affections of
the respiratory organs, which from its pathogenesis should be
rather extensive. It is the best medicine -- after Aconite
for what is known as a “ cold on the chest, ” i. e. where a
nasal catarrh has run down the air -passages, as far as the first
or even second divisions of the bronchi. Heat, soreness, and
pain behind the sternum , and an irritative shaking cough
with scanty expectoration, make up the Bryony picture. Or,
in Dr. Trinks' words, there is “ dry, more or less severe cough,
often rising to the point of retching, which is excited and
maintained by a constant tickle ’ in the lower part of the
trachea or under the breast-bone, which is more severe by day
than by night, and forces up only a very small quantity of
clear, sometimes blood - streaked , expectoration ; gives rise to
pain of being shaken in the abdomen, or in the chest and
head, and makes the patients often complain of an extremely
annoying pressure under the sternum , which confines the
breathing. These states occur frequently in elderly persons
with stuffing of the nose, running from the eyes, and derange
ment of the stomach, at the beginning and end of winter.
For this condition Bryonia effects all that can be expected
from a medicine, and that very speedily.” Another of our
veterans, Dr. Schrön, has some valuable remarks on the
action of Bryony in the respiratory sphere.* Among other
things, he says, “ In chronic cough, which becomes very vio
lent at the least excitation of the lungs, as speaking, which is
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xvi, 439.
216 BRYONIA .

worst morning and evening, and which is accompanied by

very little expectoration, as we observe in individuals whose
lungs have suffered from previous inflammation and frequent
attacks of hemoptysis, I have seen Bryonia administered with
the best effects. I had such a case in which the patient coughed
for whole nights together. Bryonia 6, given for some length
of time, not only produced perfect night- rest, but favoured
the process of nourishment in such a manner, that the patient;
who was formerly quite emaciated, picked up flesh, and her
appetite improved."
But besides conditions such as these Bryonia has obtained
reputation in the treatment of the three great affections of
the respiratory organs, croup, bronchitis, and pneumonia.
1. For croup Bryonia has been recommended by M. Teste
(in alternation with Ipecacuanha) long before M. Curie ascer
tained its powers of developing false membranes. He speaks
very confidently of the certainty of this treatment. M. Curie
himself relies upon Bryonia in the treatment of croup and
laryngo -tracheal diphtheria. We have as yet no differential
diagnosis between it and Iodine, Bromine, and Kali bichro
micum as anti-croupous remedies.
2. In most of our text- books and domestic treatises, Bryonia
occupies the first place among the remedies for acute brone
chitis. I myself am quite unable to see its homeopathicity to
this disease, when the smaller bronchiæ are involved ; and I
have never been able to trace any good effect from it in
practice. I said so much in a paper which I read on bron
chitis before the British Homeopathic Society ; and found
that my colleagues generally bad met with the same disap
pointment in the use of the drug. * Bryonia, therefore, must
no longer stand at the head of the medicines curative of
bronchitis.
3. It is otherwise with pneumonia. From what has been
said, indeed, Bryony can obviously do no good in the broncho
See Annals, v, 193.
 BRYONIA . 217

pneumonia of children and aged persons, where the inflamma

tion begins in the bronchial tubes. But in pleuro -pneumonia
Bryonia is specific ; and in pneumonia simplex it yields only
to Phosphorus. To convince yourself of its action here you
have only to read Tessier's cases treated in the Hôpital
S. Marguerite ; in which Bryonia was the chief remedy
employed.* It has also been found curative of the epidemic
pleuro -pneumonia of horned cattle.
There is yet one residuary phenomenon to be noted , viz. the
power which our medicine exerts over the mammary glands.
Whenever, from the first coming in of the milk, from catching
cold while nursing, or from abrupt weaning, the breast
becomes swollen, tender, knotty, and painful, Bryonia will
almost certainly resolve the inflammation and prevent the
formation of abscess .
I have begun by speaking of the kind of patient for
whom Bryonia is suitable. I conclude by saying that those
varieties of disease are most influenced by it whose symptoms
are increased by movement ; and that it is especially suitable
for the effects of east winds.
From its extensive range, Bryonia cannot but have many
analogues. In its relation to rheumatism , it compares with
Aconite, Rhus, and Pulsatilla : in fever it acts like Baptisia
and Eupatorium . It affects the serous membranes like
Aconite, Arsenic, and Mercurius corrosivus ; the synovial
membranes like Pulsatilla ; the alimentary canal like Nux
and Lycopodium ; the liver like Mercurius and Chelidonium ;
the air -passages like Nux and Senega ; the lungs like Phos
phorus, Chelidonium and Tartar emetic.
The dose of Bryonia, like that of all the polychrests, varies
widely. As a rule it may be said that the lowest potencies
act best in rheumatism and dyspepsia, and the medium and
higher in pneumonia. But even to this rule there are excep
tions : and in its other applications it is equally in favour
条
Op. cit. at p. 56 .
218 CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS.

with those who use the high as with those who use the low
dilutions. That is, as I believe, its action is qualitative rather
than quantitative.

There are, I doubt not, many excellent homeopathists in

Italy ; but hitherto they have contributed little to our litera.
ture or to our Materia Medica. Dr. Rubini, of Naples, has
come forward to redeem the credit of his countrymen in this
matter, and has given us a new and valuable medicine in the
night-blooming cereus,

Cactus grandiflorus.
A tincture is prepared from the young and tender branches
and the flowers.
Dr. Rubini, after observation of the physiological and
therapeutical effects of the Cactus for ten or twelve years,
published a pamphlet containing the results of his experience.
It was translated by Dr. Dudgeon for the British Journal of
Homeopathy, in whose twenty - second volume it may be
found. It contains numerous symptoms observed on the
healthy ( subjects and doses not specified ), and as many cured
in the sick. Some later provings, from four sources, are
incorporated with Dr. Rubini's results in Allen's Encyclo
pædia ; and Dr. Hale, in the article on the drug in the second
edition of his New Remedies, has collected all the clinical
experience with it which has appeared in print.
From Dr. Rubini's proving it would appear that Cactus
has a very powerful action upon the heart and arteries,
closely resembling that of Aconite . General rigor, followed
by much heat and sweat, even recurring daily at the same
hour ; and symptoms - as pain and hæmorrhage - of acute
congestion in the head and chest, attest its action on the
arterial system : while the heart gives evidence in pain,
palpitation, oppressed breathing, and constriction about the
chest, of being unusually affected. The pulsation in the
 CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS . 219

scrobiculus cordis so characteristic of cardiac disorder is

markedly produced by Cactus. It causes also acid risings
from the stomach ,with sense of weight there ; severe twisting
colic, with heat (external and internal) of the abdomen ;
bilious diarrhoea, with pain before the stools ; inflammatory
strangury, followed by copious urine loaded with lithates ;
and painful menstruation. There is great prostration ; and
the mental condition is one of profound melancholy.
From such a pathogenesis as this brilliant results might be
anticipated. Dr. Rubini assigns to it a wide range of curative
power . “ The characteristic feature of the Cactus consists in
this, that while it developes its action specially in the heart
and its bloodvessels, dissipating their congestions, and
removing their irritations, it does not weaken the nervous
system like Aconite .” So he writes in the preface to his
proving. I must differ from him about Aconite weakening
the nervous system . It need never do so, if the dose be not
too large. But if Cactus acts in this manner, it may be a
formidable rival to Aconite, as it would obviously be used in
the same class of cases . It is said to have cured with
striking rapidity acute otitis, acute and even chronic bron
chitis, pleurisy, pneumonia , hæmoptysis, hæmatemesis, gastro
enteritis, hepatitis, hæmaturia, and a quotidian ague. These
experiences have yet to be confirmed . For my own part,
when I meet with these acute fevers, congestions, and hæmor
rhages, I seem quite content with my tried and valued
Aconite, and am loth to experiment with any other medicine.
It is otherwise in affections of the heart, where Cactus appears
to exert a power beyond that of Aconite, and to fill a place
hitherto vacant. It seems beneficial in all over -actions of this
organ , from nervous palpitation to acute carditis. In the
distress arising from hypertrophy ; in the severe sufferings
incident to valvular disease * (perhaps also in angina pectoris) ;
and in chronic palpitation, it generally gives rapid and lasting
See an excellently narrated case by Dr. O'Brien in the tenth volume
of the Monthly Hom . Review .
220 CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS .

relief. The feeling as if the heart were grasped and com

pressed as with an iron band (probably spasm ) is very
characteristic of Cactus in these cases, and is well -marked in
its pathogenesis. It would probably be beneficial, at least to
relieve pain, in internal aneurisms.
Dr. Lippe states that he has frequently cured with Cactus
the pressive headache in the vertex so often met with as a
result of menorrhagia. I myself place much reliance on it in
the similar headache of menopausia. Dr. Guernsey says that
the constrictive sensation — as of an iron hoop - caused by
Cactus in many parts of the body is an unerring indication
for it in practice.
The great analogue of Cactus is obviously Aconite. Its
influence on the heart resembles that of Naja.
Dr. Rubini recommends the mother -tincture in acute in .
flammations and organic diseases of the heart. In its
nervous affections he states that the higher dilutions act
well.
 LECTURE XIII .

CALCAREA, CAMPHOR , CANNABIS SATIVA AND INDICA.

My first topic to -day is the action within the organism of

the preparations of lime - of

Calcarea .
Hahnemann has proved two of these—the acetate and the
carbonate ; and some later work has been done with C. caustica,
iodata, phosphorica, and sulphurica, and some knowledge at
tained of the virtues of C. muriatica and chlorinata . I shall
speak of each of these separately, in their distinctive charac
ters. But, first of all, there is a good deal to be said upon
Lime as such, without reference to the peculiarities of its
several salts .
Lime differs from all the substances which have hitherto
come before us as medicines, in that it is a normal con
stituent of the animal body. It enters, as you know , into the
composition not only of the bones and teeth , but into that also
of muscle, nerve, and nearly every other solid and fluid por
tion of the organism . It may hence be thought doubtful, at
the first blush, if such a substance can have pathogenetic
properties beyond those belonging to any local influence it
may exert. When absorbed into the blood, it must surely be
taken up by the tissues which it goes to constitute, and
welcomed instead of resented by them . It would seem, more
ever, to act in disease as a food rather than as a medicine ; so
that its remedial use belongs to dietetics, and finds no place
in a course of Materia Medica.
222 CALCAREA .

I have no doubt that there is some measure of truth in such

arguments, especially on their therapeutic side. That, in
cases of deficiency of Lime as of Iron, these elements can be
given as food and so appropriated by the hungry tissues, I
have no doubt ; and the practice which results from the con
viction is daily supported by success. But this does not
warrant the inference that such substances can have no
operation as poisons and no use as medicines. Consider what
must happen if they are administered in excess — if more is
introduced than the tissues require for their health and
integrity. Elimination will doubtless dispose of some of the
superfluity. But the affinity of the substance for certain
parts of the organism will still be attracting it thither :: and ,
while its quality determines its destination, its quantity will
prevent its acting as a food and being wholly assimilated .
You cannot make perfect health more healthy ; and if you
continue to ply a part with its natural stimuli and aliment
beyond the point of perfect health , you necessarily produce
disease .
Now it has been fully ascertained , and is well set forth by
Dr. von Grauvogl in his Text-Book of Homoeopathy, that the
kind of disease produced is just that which ordinarily results
from deficiency of the substance in question. Thus the
habitual drinkers of chalybeate waters become anæmic. On
the other side, it is a fact - and upon the principle similia
similibus should be so—that these elements of the tissues,
when given as medicines, promote the assimilation from the
food and blood of the very material of which they consist.
We shall see, when we come to Ferrum , that in this way
anæmia may be cured by doses of Iron far too small to have
any nutritive value. Substances of this kind are called by
von Grauvogl “ nutrition -remedies, " as distinguished from
the “ function -remedies," which are alien from the composition
of the body.
A Dr. Schussler has lately caused some sensation by pro
posing to treat all diseases with such medicines as form part
 CALCAREA . 223

of the organism , and so to limit our Materia Medica to a

dozen constituents. This proposition, indeed-commended to
us strangely enough by Dr. Constantine Hering -- we cannot
for a moment entertain ; but the importance of the remedies
in question is undoubted.
The question then arises—is Lime one of these ? To answer
it we must go, as with Iron, to places where it is habitually
introduced in excess as a constitúent of the food or drink of
the inhabitants. What do we find there ? In the first
instance bronchocele. An overwhelming mass of evidence has
now been collected in favour of the opinion that “ the en
demic prevalence of goitre is connected with the use of water
impregnated with calcareous salts.” I quote Sir Thomas
Watson, who himself endorses this view. But what does
bronchocele mean ? Is it a mere local, perhaps mechanical,
effect of the circulation of particles of Lime through the
gland ? Nay ; for if we look a little farther - at the children
of goitrous parents, at those whose thyroids are enlarging
under unfavourable hygienic circumstances -- we get a more
general condition ; we have cretinism . Cretinism essentially
consists in defective growth ; imperfect ossification of the
skull, with hydrocephalus and imbecility ; and enlargement
of the mesenteric glands. Here we have the ultimate perni
cious effects of the introduction of Lime in excess into the
system ; and they are obviously the same as those which
follow its deficiency. Dr. Beneke has well pointed out the
importance of Phosphate of Lime to cell- growth, as illus
trated by agriculture ; and no cells can need it more than
those which are concerned in ossification. It only requires to
be established that Lime dynamically cures what dynamically
it causes ; and this, I think, is fully substantiated by expe
rience. It is apparent from the high repute which — as we
shall see - the carbonate enjoys in homeopathic practice,
when given for those very conditions in doses of the utmost
minuteness. “ Where we find,” says Dr. Guernsey, 66 a large
head, large features, pale skin with a chalky look, and in
224 CALCAREA .

infants ) open fontanelles, we should think of Calcarea

carbonica .” It is hardly less apparent in the excellent results
which Dr. Ringer reports from grain doses of the phosphate,
of which he admits that only a small proportion can be
dissolved in the gastric juices, and enter the blood.
I hold it established , therefore, that we have in Lime a
medicine as well as a food ; and that in the former capacity it
acts, like all its congeners, according to the principle similia
similibus. I pass, now, to consider the ascertained usefulness
of its several salts .

Calcarea acetica was proved, in iw saturated solution of

oyster -shells in vinegar, by Hahnemann and four others : their
results, making 270 symptoms, appear in the fifth volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre. We count his solution our first
decimal potency, and make subsequent attenuations with
alcohol.
The pathogenesis of C. acetica deserves more study than it
has received, as it supplies almost our only certain knowledge
of the finer actions of Lime. The salt has been mainly used
in the bowel affections, acute and chronic, of children to
whose general diathesis Lime is suitable . Dr. Clotar Müller
says that it was the remedy in one of the only two cases of
migraine he ever succeeded in radically curing. The sym
ptoms indicating it were a feeling of great coldness in the head
and much gastric acidity.
It is usually given in the lowest attenuations.
Calcarea carbonica is the salt of lime which has found
chief use in homeopathic therapeutics. The form in which
we employ it is not chalk or marble, but the soft white
substance which is found between the external and internal
hard layers of the oyster-shell. This is triturated in the
usual way. Its pathogenesis appears in the first edition of
the Chronic Diseases, where 1090 symptoms are ascribed to it
-all (as we know ) observed on patients taking it in the
 CALCAREA. 225

attenuations from the 3rd to the 12th . In the second edition

the list is increased to 1631. Two hundred and seventy of the
additional symptoms are those of the acetate, which Hahne
mann has thought well to incorporate, marking them by a line
a sign of distinction which Dr. Hempel's translation too
often omits. The remainder are from Hahnemann himself
and from fresh fellow - observers, all of course experimenting
with globules of the 30th . *
Of the symptoms thus obtained I have nothing to say.
But, taking the phenomena of cretinism as our best proving
of Lime, we have in the virtues of Calcarea (so called among
us par excellence) their truly homeopathic application. It is
in the large class of diseases due to derangement of the
secondary assimilation that it finds its curative place. The
three great forms of assimilative derangement are rachitis ,
scrofula, and tuberculosis ; and in all of these Calcarea is
a principal remedy.
1. First, of rachitis. “If a child cuts its teeth late, if it
does not walk so early as other children, if the fontanelles are
late in closing, the probability is that it is the subject of
rickets :" so writes the late Dr. Hillier, in his excellent
Clinical Treatise on Diseases of Children . Well, then, when
rachitis thus manifests itself, you will find Calcarea an invalu
able aid in its treatment. But when the diathesis is more
pronounced , when its phenomena reach beyond those of
deficient supply of lime-salts, you will have to look farther for
your medicinal remedies. I shall have more to say upon
this subject when I come to Silicea, which I believe to be the
most potent of anti- rachitics.
2. Regarding Calcarea in scrofula, I will begin by citing
our latest writer on the disease, Dr. H. Goullon, of Weimar.
“ Water,” he says ,“ that contains the salts of lime in excess is
accused by some of producing scrofula . Thus it is said that
Dr. Allen's arrangement of the drug contains some additional sym
ptoms obtained from an alcoholic solution of the precipitated carbonate by
Dr. Koch on himself and four others.
15
226 CALCAREA.

the inhabitants of Rheims owe the large number of persons

affected by scrofula among their population to this circum
stance . If this be so, does there exist a greater triumph for
Hahnemann's principle ? Certainly the Hahnemannian
school, if it were without the salts of lime, would not wish to
treat scrofula . Calcarea carbonica performs wonders in scro
fulous ophthalmia ; like Sulphur, it removes scrofulous pot
bellies, if I may be allowed to use this expression ; like
Phosphorus, it cures scrofulous diarrhea. ” Dr. Goullon then
cites cases of tabes mesenterica ; of strumous ophthalmia and
otorrhæa ; and of disease of the joints and vertebræ in such
subjects, where Calcarea has proved curative. My own expe
rience with it is especially in the treatment of mesenteric
disease, in which — if not too advanced — it is an invaluable
remedy. You will remember the enlarged abdomen of cre
tinism . This brings us also to bronchocele, of which Goullon
writes : “ The swelling of the thyroid gland is so intimately
connected with scrofula that its former name— struma - has
been applied to the diathesis.” He gives three cases of the
disease cured by Calcarea. They were all simple hyper
trophies; but the power of the drug over cystic growths — of
which we shall speak presently - would encourage its use in
the cystic form also of goitre.
3. I cannot speak with any certainty of the action of
Calcarea in tuberculosis . At the British Homeopathic
Congress of 1873, Drs. Gibbs Blake and Wynne Thomas
brought forward some evidence of its power over chronic
maladies associated with high temperature, some of these
being certainly and others presumably of a tuberculous
nature . * But I should have most confidence in it here as a
a
preventive. There is a peculiar form of dyspepsia which
often precedes the development of tuberculosis. Indicated
more or less precisely by Drs. Tweedy Todd , Clark, Bennett,
and Ancell, it has been most fully characterised by Mr.
* See Monthly Hom . Review , xvii, 683 .
 CALCAREA . 227

Jonathan Hutchinson. Its special feature consists in acid

eructations after food : " everythlng the patient takes ‘ rises
acid,' as he expresses it, but more particularly everything
containing fat, oil, or sugar." There is a special dislike to
fat present.* Now in this acid dyspepsia Calcarea proves
itself an excellent remedy. I know not whether the fact that
two of Hahnemann's provers of the acetate had constant sour
eructations has any bearing on the point ; but of the value of
the carbonate, in the minutest doses, there is not the least
question. I have myself cured with it a most obstinate case,
in which the fount of acid seemed inexhaustible, and even
gouty symptoms were set up in a patient the most unlikely to
be attacked with such a malady.
In these and other derangements of nutrition, when
occurring ( as they generally do) in children, Calcarea is
especially indicated where profuse perspiration of the head
is present.
The powers of our drug seem moreover to extend to the
new products which result from disorders of growth. It has
repeatedly been reported as causing the disappearance of
warts, polypi, and even benignant tumours of the encysted
kind . In this connexion it must not be forgotten as a
possible aid against cancer . In the Lancet for 1868 Dr.
Peter Hood published two cases in which the daily adminis
tration of small quantities of powdered oyster-shell effected a
cure of this dire disease. Mr. Spencer Wells, who authenti
cated his observation, suggested that the rationale of the cure
was that the lime caused ossification of the blood - vessels of
the diseased part, and so starved it out. The process is one
not easy of conception ; and a specific curative power is at
least as tenable a theory.
This is the great sphere of the action of Calcarea. But it
* Aitken ( Science and Practice of Medicine, 5th ed., ii, 206), to whom
I am indebted for these facts.
† See Goullon on Scrofula, art. Calcarea, and Brit. Journ . of Hom.,
Uri, 31.
228 CALCAREA .

has other uses, which seem independent of its power over

assimilation. One of these is of a very curious kind ; and , if
I had not repeatedly seen it myself, and had it vouched for
by excellent observers like Drs. Dudgeon and Bayes, could
hardly have credited it. It is its power, when given in
repeated doses of the 30th dilution, of relieving the pain
attending the passage of biliary (Dr. Bayes says also of renal)
calculi. It has for me quite superseded the need of chloro
form and even of the hot bath . Hahnemann , moreover ,
insists much on the relation of Calcarea to the menstrual
function . “ It is indispensable and curative," he says, " when
the catamenia appear a few days before the period, especially
when the flow of blood is considerable. But if the catamenia
appear at the regular period or a little later, Calcarea is
hardly ever useful, even if the catamenia should be rather
profuse." In these cases, says Dr. Guernsey (who has a
great penchant for out-of-the -way symptoms), the patients
often complain of aa sensation as if cold, damp stockings were
on their feet : whenever they do, we may think of Calcarea.
Again, the medicine has a considerable reputation in epi
lepsy * and in migraine, t when these affections appear in the
natural subjects of its influence, i. e. (as I might have
said from the first) in unhealthy women and children, of
leuco -phlegmatic temperament, and with tendency to corpu
lence .
The analogues of Calcarea carbonica are Baryta, Iodium ,
Phosphorus, and Silicea .
The higher dilutions, from the 12th to the 30th , are those
which appear to be most in favour, and which I myself use ;
but the 3rd is undoubtedly efficacious. Calcarea seems seldom
or never employed by the exclusive adherents of mother tinc
tures and crude drugs.

* Brit. Journ , of Hom ., xxii, 216, 238.

† See ibid., xxi , 282.
 CALCAREA . 229

Calcarea caustica . - Lime in this form , in which we have it

in the ordinary lime-water, can have but slight pathogenetic
properties, as we give the latter freely, even to children , as an
antacid . But provings made with it by Koch, Keil, and
Liedbeck on thirteen persons give it in Dr. Allen's Encyclo
pædia a list of 342 symptoms. These seem but trivial ; and I
have no knowledge of their having received any application to
practice.

Calcarea iodata, the iodide of lime, has been proved by

Dr. W. S. Blakely and another in the crude substance and
the lower triturations ; 47 symptoms of it are given by Allen.
These, too, are of no very definite character ; though , as
with C. caustica, the head is the part most affected. Dr.
Meyhoffer thinks the iodide the best form of lime in the
chronic bronchitis of scrofulous children, when in a thin
subject (in this last point distinguished from the carbonate)
the cervical glands are much swollen, the cough rather dry ,
and there is ground for suspicion of enlargement of the
bronchial glands.

Calcarea phosphorica . — Dr. Hering has justly taken me to

task for having said , in the first edition of my Manual, that
this salt of lime had never been proved. He refers me to
some provings of the 1st and 2nd triturations, made under
his superintendence, which I ought to have known of, as they
are in Jahr's New Manual. He speaks also of yet more
extensive provings still unpublished. It has not been much
used in homeopathic practice. Dr. von Grauvogl relies much
upon it in chronic hydrocephalus, both to cure the already
existing disease, and — by giving it to the mother during
pregnancy - to avert the tendency to its recurrence in
future children. Dr. Cooper* speaks highly of it for
chronically-enlarged tonsils in strumous subjects; and Dr.
* Monthly Hom . Review , xi.
230 CAMPHOR .

Verdi, of Washington, has much confidence in it in phthisis.*

But the main use of phosphate of lime is as a food in the
same class of cases in which we use the carbonate as a
remedy, and perhaps in others. Dr. Ringer gives us the
latest estimate of its efficiency. He recommends it in most
forms of mal-nutrition and defective cell-growth ; in anæmia
from growing fast, rapid child -bearing, prolonged suckling, or
excessive menstruation ; in chronic discharges ; in rachitis ;
and for the bad effects of town life, including brain -fag.
Dr. Ringer gives one or two grains of the salt three times a
day. The homeopathic uses have been made with the lower
triturations.

Calcarea muriatica (the chloride of calcium ) has not been

proved. I find it extremely useful in the moist porrigo
capitis of children , giving it in the first attenuation. Some
use it in solution as an abortive local application for boils ; it
is said to ease the pain also.f
Calcarea chlorinata (the chlorinated lime) we know only
from Dr. Neidhard's strong recommendation of it in diph.
theria, for which he looks upon it as a specific. I He gives
fractional doses of the liquor of the Pharmacopæia .
I have said nothing of the Calcarea sulphurica, as its
symptoms (343 in Allen's list) were obtained from the 30th
and 200th attenuations ; and it is unknown to practice.

The next medicine I have to bring before you is

Camphor,
of which we make an alcoholic solution. The proportion of
drug to vehicle in this mother tincture has ranged in homæo
pathic pharmacy from one eighth to one twelfth . The
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 749 .
+ Ibid ., xix, 498 . * Ibid ., xxvi, 120.
 CAMPHOR . 231

British Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia makes it one tenth ,

The preparation sold as “ Rubini's Camphor " is a saturated
solution, as used by that physician in the treatment of
cholera. Some alarming accidents have lately occurred from
persons employing this tincture with the freedom to which
they have been accustomed in the use of the ordinary pre
paration, which can do no harm . There has been a very
absurd and unfair attempt to make capital out of these
occurrences as against homeopathy. A few minutes' thought
and inquiry would have shown that the only blame rested
with the carelessness which ignored an obvious and reasonable
difference of strength in the two solutions.
A proving of Camphor appears in the fourth volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 105 symptoms from
Hahnemann himself, and 240 “ observations of others,” of
which 93 are from twenty - one authors, and the rest from four
fellow -provers. Camphor was also one of the medicines
proved by Professor Jörg : his results, obtained upon himself
and ten of his pupils, are given in Frank's Magazin (iv, 482 ),
and related by Hempel, who adds some further pathogenetic
material.
The action of Camphor on the organism has been a matter
of dispute from early times. The old physicians are divided
into two camps on the question whether it is a hot or a cold
remedy. Hahnemann recognises the variable character of
the facts before him , and suggests their explanation . “ The
action, " he says, “ of this substance on the healthy body is
extremely problematic and difficult of definition , for this
reason, that the primary action of Camphor alternates so
suddenly, and is so easily confounded with the reaction of the
vital principle.” He explains farther on that he agrees with
those who consider chill and depression to be the first effects
of Camphor, and refer the symptoms of stimulation so often
observed to a secondary reaction . He is supported herein by
the weighty authority of Trousseau and Pidoux. After a full
survey of the evidence, they conclude that the essential action
 232 CAMPHOR .

of Camphor is “ refrigerant and sedative, " and describe its

full poisonous effects as those of collapse with chill.
It was not many years before Habnemann had an oppor
tunity of giving these views about Camphor a practical
application, and thereby of making a most important contri
bution to therapeutics. In 1831 Asiatic cholera for the first
time invaded Europe. The few physicians then practising
bomeopathically sought diligently for its simillimum ,.that
they might be ready to encounter it. Several medicines were
suggested, but when Hahnemann spoke out from his retreat
at Coethen, he pronounced the one great remedy to be
Camphor. He described the well-known features of the first
stage of invasion,—the sinking of strength, the coldness, the
anxietas; all these occurring before the vomiting, purging, and
cramps have set in. Here, Hahnemann said , Camphor is a
potent and certain remedy. It should be given freely — by the
mouth, by inhalation, by friction , by clyster ; and persevered
with till the patient recovers. Nor, though the second stage
has supervened ere the treatment has begun, should Camphor
be neglected. But here, unless improvement set in within a
couple of hours, it is of no use to persist, and recourse must be
had to other remedies, of which he specifies Cuprum and
Veratrum . *
Hahnemann had the gratification of hearing of the great
success which attended all who followed this advice of his,
and of numerous instances in which the family use of Camphor
had checked the earliest symptoms of the prevailing scourge .
In the epidemic of 1849, British physicians had an oppor
tunity of testing the value of the remedy : and Dr. Drysdale
in Liverpoolt and Dr. Russell in Edinburgh vied in their
praises of it. The latter, who has written a book on the
disease , says : “ It is our firm belief that Camphor is ar
almost infallible remedy for cholera, if given from the very
* His paper may be read in Dudgeon's Lesser Writings of Hahnemann ,
p. 845 .
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., viii, 149. I On Epidemic Cholera, p. 211 .
 CAMPHOR . 233

outset.” In 1854 the same testimony was given to its value

in England ; and from Italy still more striking evidence was
adduced as to what it can do. Dr. Rubini, of Naples — he
who has given us Cactus grandiflorus - states that during this
epidemic he treated , together with his colleagues, 592 cases
with Camphor alone without a single death. He gave it in the
spirit of Hahnemann's instructions - ad libitum doses of a
saturated tincture, and relied upon it to the exclusion of all
other medicines in every stage of the disease. You will find
a full account of his observations in the tenth volume of the
Monthly Homoeopathic Review . Much exception has been
taken to his statement of results, as exaggerated ; but I think
without just cause. Dr. Rubini is a physician of undoubted
experience and judgment, not to speak of trustworthiness ;
and his published affirmations have never been contradicted .
He does not mean to say that all his cases were in collapse :

on the contrary, of a set of 200 treated in one institution, it

is expressly mentioned that collapse occurred in fifteen only.
What our colleague wishes us to understand is, that in an
epidemic of Asiatic cholera in which 377 cases came under
his own treatment, and 215 more under that of his fellow
practitioners, they gave nothing but Camphor, and lost no
patient. There must have been the usual proportion of
severe cases among these ; so that the results are most
gratifying. We have hitherto been jubilant about reducing
the ordinary 50 per cent. mortality from cholera to one half ;
but 26 per cent. of deaths is a ghastly rate after all. We are
bound to look in directions which promise something better
still ; and Dr. Rubini's extension of Hahnemann's Camphor
treatment deserves our most respectful attention . Mr.
Proctor, indeed, reports less favourably of it in the Liver
pool epidemic of 1866 ;* but farther experimentation is re
quired.
It is natural to inquire whether the report of the anti
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxv, 92.
234 CAMPHOR .

choleraic virtues of Camphor has spread beyond homeopathic

regions, and whether any trial has been made of it. This
might well be, as in its case there are no posological preju
dices to be overcome. I am only acquainted, however, with
one miserable instance of its use in the last epidemic, where
it was given to a few patients at the London Hospital. The
physician did not deign to follow our method of adminis
tration , viz. dropping it on sugar, but gave it suspended in
water. He thus nauseated his patients, and burnt their
throats ; and consequently, instead of exhibiting it in a better
form , thought fit to abandon its use altogether. Both Ringer
and Wood, however, now recommend it ; and the latter states
that it forms the chief ingredient in the popular cholera
mixtures sold in America.
A similar action to the foregoing, though on a humbler
level, is the power which Camphor has of checking an incipient
." cold .” Hahnemann, in the preface to his proving, commends
it in the influenza then first known as an epidemic ; and Dr.
Ringer has lately extolled its virtues in the chronic
paroxysmal coryza from which some people suffer. In all
these nasal defluxions Camphor should be taken by olfaction
as well as internally . It is also of much repute in summer
diarrhea. I think that Dr. Phillips well characterises the
condition which calls for it here as one of exhaustion with
irritability of the intestinal nerves resulting from high
summer heat .
A few words must be said on the symptoms of re -action
as we have chosen to consider them - of Camphor poisoning.
They are those of fever, with much confusion and oppression
of the brain, and even disorder of its functions. The fever,
as in a case recorded by Dr. Hempel, may take on a typhoid
form and be of some duration . I cannot say whether these
facts have any relation to the antifebrile and antiseptic powers
ascribed to Camphor by the physicians of the last century, or
to its occasional successful employment in mania. But I do
think they are closely connected with another use made of it
 CAMPHOR. 235

in homeopathic practice, viz. to recover the patient from the

state into which he is thrown by the retrocession of measles
or scarlatina. There is here the same cerebral disturbance
and oppression : and the patient, though hot within, is cold
without. He has that characteristic of Camphor noted by
Dr. Guernsey, that, though cold to the touch, he will not
remain covered . I know the value of cold affusion in these
terrible cases ; but it is at least jucundius, if not also tutius,
to effect what we want by the administration of Camphor.
The only marked local action of Camphor is on the genito
urinary organs, which is all the more interesting, as it cannot
be detected as passing off by the urine. That it causes
strangury is undoubted, and is admitted both by Pereira and
by Ringer.. The former is naturally astonished at a power of
diminishing irritation of the urinary organs being assigned to
Camphor. But that it has this power, whether the strangury
is idiopathic or the effect of Cantharides, is the testimony of
all the old physicians. I have myself twice seen patients in
this agonising condition translated , as it were, from hell to
heaven in less than an hour by repeated doses of the drug.
As with Cantharis, the urinary irritation of Camphor some
times extends to the genitals , causing priapism and such - like
phenomena. But the ordinary and permanent effect upon
these organs is of a depressing character. “Camphora per
nares castrat odore mares ” is quoted in all books on Materia
Medica ; and Hahnemann cites an observation from Loss,
in which impotence thus produced lasted aa considerable time.
I do not know whether much use has been made of this
action of Camphor. Dr. Hirsch has recommended it for
irritable weakness of the sexual organs, with nocturnal
emissions. Dr. Norton mentions аa. similar case . *
Besides these uses in disease, Camphor is reputed by
Hahnemann an antidote to most vegetable and to some
animal and mineral poisons. Against the majority of these
In an article on the drug in Brit. Journ. of Hom., ix, 407.
236 CANNABIS SATIVA .

it probably has no true antidotal power, and it would hardly

neutralise their effects in poisonous quantities. But for the
more delicate disturbances produced by minute doses Camphor
may be a capital remedy, by substituting a more potent im
pression than theirs upon the nervous centres. This is
probably what he meant.
Dr. Holcombe * thus sums up the action of Camphor : “ It
is antidotal to almost all the drastic vegetable poisons
--relieves strangury - procures reaction from cold , con
gested conditions -- is the great anti- choleraic - and quiets
nervous irritability sometimes better than Coffea, Ignatia, or
Hyoscyamus. This is its whole clinical value--and a great
one it is—in a nutshell."
I must not leave Camphor without referring to Dr. Harley's
communication regarding it in the ninth volume of the
Practitioner. He finds that in medicinal doses — from five
to thirty grains - its effects are but slight, being chiefly those
of sedation of the motor and ideational centres of the
cerebrum , with much giddiness.
In its influence over the circulation Camphor resembles
Aconite, Arsenic, and Veratrum album. Its power of causing
strangury is like that of Cantharis and Terebinthina, less like
that of Belladonna .
The drug does not seem to bear attenuation. The primary
solution is that always in use.
I will conclude this lecture with some account of the
medicinal virtues of hemp. Unlike the ordinary practice ,
we use not the Cannabis Indica only, but that also which
grows in colder climates. Let me speak of the latter first
Cannabis sativa .
Our tincture is prepared from the flowering tops and upper
leaflets.
A proving of hemp, by Hahnemann and eight others,
* United States Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. i.
 CANNABIS SATIVA . 237

appears in the first volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It

contains 330 symptoms, 47 of which, however, are from
authors. The severity of some of these is puzzling, when we
consider how mild aa poison the plant is. But the mystery is
explained when we examine the originals of the two prin
cipal groups — those of Morgagni and of Ramazzini. The
former consists of cases of disease recorded in various parts of
his De sedibus et causis morborum , and mentioned as occurring
in hemp -dressers ; but rarely traced or traceable to their
occupation. The latter are symptoms occurring in workers
in hemp and linseed — the connexion , as well as the nature of
the phenomena, showing that they are mere local effects of
the dust. These, therefore, must be eliminated from the
pathogenesis of the drug. But in their place we have five more
recent provings to put, all instituted with substantial doses,
which are duly incorporated with Hahnemann's by Dr. Allen.
There is an interesting study of the drug by the late Dr.
Norton in the ninth volume of the British Journal of
Homeopathy.
It would appear, from Hahnemann's preface to his proving,
that Cannabis was in common use at his day as a remedy for
acute gonorrhea. It was supposed to act as a " demulcent ; "
but he is well warranted in saying that its curative powers
depend upon the faculty it possesses of producing a similar
morbid condition in the urinary organs. Its pathogenesis
shows excessive irritation of the mucous membrane of the
bladder and urethra, and of the prepuce. The latter is dark
red, hot, and inflamed ; there is much burning in the urethra,
painful and difficult micturition, chordee, and mucous dis
charge. It has been customary to add the observation of
Morgagni, in which the urine was so full of mucus and pus
that the catheter became clogged, and failed in its office.
This, however, is not to the point, as the case was one of
paraplegia from spinal disease, and the state of the bladder
( noted eight days before death ) was only that incident to
such affections . But there is amply sufficient evidence
238 CANNABIS SATIVA .

besides this to prove the homeopathicity of Cannabis to

urinary inflammations ; and it continues to be in the school
of Hahnemann the favourite remedy for gonorrhea after the
most urgent symptoms have been subdued by Aconite and
Cantharis.
A good deal of use has been made of Cannabis in affections
of the eyes, owing to the symptoms in Hahnemann's patho
genesis__" the cornea becomes opaque ; pellicle before the
eyes ” and cataract.” For the first he himself vouches ;
and though one would have liked to know under what circum
stances it occurred , we cannot but accept it, and it is certain
that the medicine has some effect in removing corneal
opacities left behind after strumous ophthalmia. The
symptom “ cataract is referred to Neuhold. This author is
recording effects of the effluvia of hemp before drying, so
that his symptoms are valid enough. Nor is there any
doubt that his “ suffusiones oculorum, ” which Hahnemann
renders cataract, may mean this. Celsus (vii, 7, 14) uses
the phrase in this sense : and we cannot but remember
Milton's

So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,

Or dim suffusion veiled.”

At the same time, when we find the phrase occurring in a list

of the observed effects of hemp without special mention or
warrant, it becomes very unlikely that the author meant to
hazard in this manner so startling an assertion as that the
herb can cause cataract. We must wait for further infor
mation on this head .
Hahnemann's pathogenesis further credits Cannabis with a
power of causing inflammation of the lungs with delirium
and vomiting of green bile. Some recommendations and
applications of it in pneumonia have followed, but I think
without warrant. The observations in question are cited
from Morgagni ; and he is evidently speaking of the irritating
effect of inhaling the hemp -dust on the workers in it.
 CANNABIS INDICA . 239

In the fourth volume of the British Journal of Homøopathy:

Dr. Quin has recorded an excellent case of hemicrania cured
by Cannabis. It was primarily coincident with the catamenia ,
which were far too copious. I think I have seen the medicine
useful in menstrual headache.
The action of Cannabis on the urinary tract assimilates it
to Apis, Cantharis, Copaiba, and Terebinthina ; that on the
eyes to Euphrasia.
There is a general agreement that for gonorrhoea the mother
tincture of Cannabis is required, in frequent doses of from one
to ten drops. In the other affections mentioned the medium
dilutions have been efficacious.

And now of the

Cannabis Indica .
The peculiar properties of this variety of hemp exist in a
resin which is developed in it by climatic influences. This ,
when presented separately , is the substance known as Has
chish, Bhang, Gunja, and Churrus. A tincture is prepared
from it for it for ordinary practice by dissolving one part
in twenty of rectified spirit. One part of this tincture,
therefore, to four of alcohol will make our first centesimal
dilution .
Some provings of the Indian hemp, made upon seven
persons with the tincture and lower attenuations, were
published by the American Provers' Union in 1839. Since
then scores of persons have tested its curious effects upon
themselves ; and the experiences of haschish-eating have been
put on record - by one writer with a descriptive power and
gorgeousness of diction hardly inferior to that of “ the
English opium -eater.” Of the results thus obtained Dr.
Allen has made an exhaustive collection ; and 918 symptoms
of the drug, including the mental phenomena described at
full length, stand in his Encyclopædia.
To possess yourselves of the characters of the haschisch
1
 210 CANNABIS INDICA .

intoxication , it is necessary that you should study it thus in

detail. No outline can adequately present it. It is a
condition of intense exaltation , in which all perceptions and
conceptions, all sensations and emotions, are exaggerated to
the utmost degree. Distances seem infinite and time endless ;
pleasure is heaven itself, and any painful thought or feeling
plunges at once into hell. The least suggestion will set
going a train of vivid illusions. All the time a dual con
sciousness is present : the experimenter feels ever and anon
that he is distinct from the subject of the haschisch dream, and
can think rationally. The bodily sensations accompanying
these phenomena are not many. Headache, sense of dryness
of the mouth and throat, and anæsthesia of the surface are
not uncommon ; and in the motor sphere there is expe
rienced at times the peculiar condition known as cataleptic.
Dr. O'Shaughnessy thus describes the effect of the resin on
a native of India :-“ At 8 p.m. we found him insensible, but
breathing with perfect regularity, his pulse and skin natural,
and the pupils freely contractile at the approach of light.
Happening by chance to lift up the patient's right arm, the pro
fessional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found
that it remained in the posture in which I had placed it. It
required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find
that the patient had by the influence of this narcotic been
thrown into that most strange and most extraordinary of all
nervous conditions,-into that state which so few have seen,
and the existence of which so many still discredit,—the genuine
catalepsy of the nosologist ." *
Such application of Cannabis Indica to practice as has been
made has been in perfect homeopathic rapport with these
effects. Dr. Handfield Jones naïvely describes it as “ physio
logically a nervous stimulant, and therapeutically a nervous
sedative.” Dr. Ringer and others recommend it in headache.
It should be remembered if we ever come across a case of

Pereira, sub roce.

 CANNABIS INDICA . 242

catalepsy. I myself had a patient in whom attacks, probably

hysterical at bottom , assumed a cataleptiform character, and
here Cannabis Indica proved rapidly curative. The exalta
tion of ideas it causes reminds one of the first stage of the
general paralysis of the insane. It could not control the
meningeal inflammation said to be always present in these
patients ; but it might benefit the excited nervous centres
while other remedies were striking at the root of the malady.
The effects of Cannabis Indica on the brain may be
advantageously compared with those of Agaricus, Belladonna ,
Camphor, Crocus, Hyoscyamus, Opium, and Stramonium . In
its power of causing catalepsy its only rival is the Chloride of
Tin.
In the case mentioned I gave the second dilution .

16
 LECTURE XIV.

CANTHARIS, CAPSICUM , CARBON SULPHIDUM, CARBO ANI

MALIS AND VEGETABILIS, CAULOPHYLLUM, CAUSTICUM .

I HAVE to -day to speak first of the Spanish fly,

Cantharis,
of which we make a tincture by percolation.
There is a short pathogenesis of this substance in Hahne
mann's Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis, consist
ing of 30 symptoms observed by himself, and 75 from
nineteen authors. He did not, however, take the medicine
up again ; and its full proving appears in the first volume
of Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre. It contains
952 symptoms, many of which are citations from records of
poisoning and overdosing, and the rest obtained by five
provers. Some very complete observations of the action of
the Spanish fly on animals have lately been made by Dr.
Cantieri, of Milan , and published in the Italian journal
Lo Sperimentale ( xxxiv, 9, 10 ). I take the account of
these from the abstracts which have appeared in English
periodicals.
The primary interest of Cantharis arises from its local use
66
as an epispastic. The theory of the " counter -irritation ” thus
practised has been much discussed of late ; and Drs . Anstie *
and James Rosst have revived the doctrine of Fletcherf on
* Practitioner, iv, 156.
t On Counter- Irritation (Churchill).
# Elements of General Pathology (1842), p. 484 ; see also Dr. Drys.
dale's exposition of Fletcher's doctrine in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 494 .
 CANTHARIS . 243

the subject, and (as I think ) have demonstrated afresh its

soundness. We have but to go here as elsewhere to patho
genetics, and there we shall find the explanation and guidance
of our therapeutics. It appears, accordingly, that “ blisters
applied to the thorax and abdomen of dogs and rabbits will
produce redness and absolute inflammation of the pleura and
peritoneum , in patches distinctly corresponding to the vesi.
cated surface of the skin . "* Hence blisters when used (as
they principally are ) for chronic inflammations are homeo
pathic agents, though 'acting by local absorption instead of
by elective affinity. We have not yet the same experimental
proof in the case of neuralgia, for which blisters are now
being so freely employed . But I have shown in other placest
that Dr. Anstie's whole theory and practice on this point is
homeopathic in everything but name, and implies that here
also an irritant is being sent to an already irritated part, and
needs to be diluted (by distance) to obviate aggravation .
But, although we thus claim for homæopathy whatever
benefit blisters may effect in the majority of cases in
which they are applied, we do not as a rule employ them.
We have medicines which, given internally, seek out under
the guidance of elective affinity the part that may be inflamed
or the nerve that is aching, and there more pleasantly and
at least as effectually extinguish the fire. So far as this holds
good, blisters are put out of court . But it is a question
whether there are not gaps as yet unfilled by specific medi
cation, where judicious counter -irritation might supply what
is missing. Should we desire to test this question the
excellent account of the value of blistering given by Dr.
Ringer will help us . At present we use Cantharis externally,
not to produce blisters, but to disperse them . In burns and
scalds causing vesication, in vesicular erysipelas, and in
herpes zoster we have conditions of the surface more or less
resembling the local effects of Cantharis ; and in all these
* Inman , New Theory and Practice of Medicine, p. 322.
† Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 326 ; XXX , 373.
244 CANTHARIS .

affections the external application of the diluted tincture has.

been attended with great advantage. In burns and scalds I
have often seen the best effects from it.
When introduced into the system , Cantharis acts as an
irritant poison, developing in all parts which it reaches either
by local contact or by] elective affinity the same " pellicular
phlegmasia " (as Trousseau and Pidoux call it) which it
causes on the skin . The inflammation it sets up in the tract
from the mouth to the stomach seems purely local, but the
intestines are somewhat irritated even when it is introduced
directly into the blood. Under these circumstances it
quickens (while weakening) the pulse, and raises the tempe
rature, thus producing a true febrile condition ; and it
inflames, besides the genito -urinary organs, the serous mem
branes throughout the body - peritoneum , pleura, peri
cardium , and the cerebral and spinal arachnoid. The first
named, however, are the chief seat of its action. The slightest
effects are increased quantity of urine and still more increased
frequency of urination, with heat in passing it in the case of
men , in women smarting. In higher degrees of its action it
inflames the whole mucous tract from the kidneys to the
urethra, causing pain in the loins ; scanty, high -coloured,
bloody, and generally albuminous urine, often loaded with
tube - casts and sometimes with epithelial cells ; and burning
pain and tenderness in the hypogastrium , with severe
strangury . * The characteristic pellicle is sometimes found
in the bladder, and has been voided ( say Trousseau and
Pidoux) into the chamber -pot. With all this there is fever
and great restlessness. The genital organs are similarly and
considerably affected . With the slighter degrees of urinary
irritation there is moderate erotic excitement ; but in
poisoning by the drug this sometimes becomes painfully
excessive, and is accompanied by priapism , inflammation ( even
to gangrene) of the external parts, and of the uterus, some
times causing abortion .
* See Brit . Journ. of Hom., xvii, 548.
 CANTHARIS . 245

The nervous symptoms of Cantharis usually come on some

days at least after the ingestion of the poison. They consist
in delirium - which, with the local throat-symptoms, closely
resembles hydrophobia, convulsions, and ultimately coma.
These are possibly to some extent due to the meningeal irri
tation which Cantharis can set up. Dr. Cantieri also found
softening of the nervous centres, especially in the cerebellum
and the lumbar cord . But they are chiefly, I think, secondary
to the renal mischief.
It would seem that under favouring circumstances Cantharis
can specifically irritate the skin . Pereira mentions a case in
which the application of a blister to the pectoral region caused
the development of ecthymatous pustules not only there, but
all over the body.
Correspondingly with these physiological effects, the main
homeopathic use of Cantharis is in inflammations of the
urinary organs. This is no novelty as regards their chronic
forms, for Groenvelt and Bartholin advocated the practice
more than a century ago, and the former was sent to Newgate
for the offence . * But to use it in acute cystitis and nephritis,
and in inflammatory strangury, was only possible upon the
determinate method and with the small doses of homeopathy.
In such affections we count it the chief remedy. Its renal
symptoms show that it acts on the secreting tubes rather
than , as Turpentine, on the Malpighian bodies. It is hence
inferior to that medicine in simple congestive suppression of
urine or hæmaturia. But when desquamation predominates
over congestion, as in the acute Bright's disease of post
scarlatinal dropsy, Cantharis takes the highest place. Its
Dr.
secondary head -symptoms are very significant here.
Ringer strongly recommends it in this malady in minim
doses of the tincture, after the first symptoms have passed
off; and says that the discrepancy respecting the effect of
Cantharides arises probably from the difference of the dose
administered by different observers. He also recommends it
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., x, 537.
246 CANTHARIS .

in the same quantities in diurnal enuresis in women — the

condition for which Dr. Cooper has established the use of
Ferrum . The influence of Cantharis probably stops short of
the lower end of the urethra ; and it is not thought much of
in gonorrhoea, save where the inflammation extends so high as
to cause irritability of the bladder. But in those cases of
spermatorrhoea described by Lallemand which depend on the
spread of gonorrheal irritation through the ejaculatory ducts
along the spermatic passages, Cantharis is one of the most
homeopathic medicines ; and Dr. Kidd speaks well of its
efficacy in their treatment. *
As to the other parts irritated by Cantharis, we must note
the great success obtained by Cazenave in the treatment of
cutaneous squamæ and vesiculæ by small doses (m ij — v ) of
the tincture.t We must also take into account Dr. Jousset's
estimate of the drug as the chief remedy for pleurisy. As soon
as effusion has taken place, he says in his excellent Eléments de
Médecine Pratique, we must resort to Cantharis, in the third
dilution , every two or three hours ; if necessary descending
to the second, the first, or even the mother tincture. In his
hands it appears quite to take the place of Bryonia and Apis ;
but he mentions one case in which the last-named succeeded
after it had failed.
Lastly, we must consider Bretonneau's comparison between
the effects of Cantharis in animals and diphtheria. He
describes the concrete exudation lining the mucous mem
branes, and the coldness and adynamia ; to which Dr. Black ,
commenting on the point, aptly adds the albuminuria of the
two affections. This physician naturally suggests the trial
of the drug as a remedy for the disease. I have never used
it myself, and I believe that it has disappointed expectations.
Dr. Ludlam , however, in his Clinical Lectures on Diphtheria ,
speaks highly of it for the prostration which often
* Annals, v, 131 .
+ Trousseau and Pidoux ; see also Brit. Journ . of Hom ., iii, 417.
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xvii.
 CAPSICUM . 247

continues after the acuteness of the mischief has sub

sided ; and Dr. Lawrence Newton communicates a similar
erperience. *
In its action on the urinary organs Cantharis is completely
paralleled only by Terebinthina ; but Arsenic, Mercurius corro
sicus, Kali bichromicum , Apis, Camphor, Cannabis sativa, and
Copaiba coincide with it at some points of the tract.
The dilutions from the third decimal upwards have been
those commonly used internally. For external application
the lotion should not be stronger than one part of the tincture
to twenty of water .
My next medicine is the Cayenne pepper,
Capsicum .
It is prepared by pulverizing the ripe capsules of the
Capsicum annuum , together with the seed , and from these
making a tincture by percolation.
The pathogenesis of Capsicum is in the sixth volume of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre, and contains 275 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 65 from four fellow -workers, and four from
anthors. Dr. Allen has added a few later observations.
Capsicum produces its well -known burning in the mouth,
throat, gullet, stomach, and intestines, along which it passes,
and in the urinary passages by which it is eliminated . The
condition set up is one of incipient inflammation, and is
identical with that produced by the rubefacient action of the
drug on the skin . Local application, moreover, is not always
necessary to induce the latter effect. Dr. Allen's patho
genesis contains symptoms produced by repeated teaspoonfuls
of a solution of Capsicum taken for a slight cold ; and among
these are a papulo -vesicular eruption all over the body, with
much itching and burning.
The common employment of Capsicum as a gargle in sore
throat is undoubtedly an instance of homeopathic action. It
* Monthly Hom . Review , xiv, 411 .
248 CAPSICUM .

used to be limited to relaxed conditions of the mucous mem

brane ; but Drs . Ringer and Phillips concur to extend it to
the early stage of acute inflammation . The latter recom .
mends it in “ throat -coughs,” in which I have myself seen it
of great service . Its usefulness in atonic dyspepsia, especially
that of drunkards, is well established ; but belongs to it rather
as a condiment. * It has been found of service in nervous
irritabilityof the parts it inflames, as hiccough, and tenesmus
of the bladder and rectum ; even in dysentery where the last
symptom is prominent. It should be useful in some irri.
tations of the urinary tract : Dr. Phillips speaks of having
cured aa chronic case of renal congestion with it. I am not
aware of its having been used in cutaneous affections, save as
a local application to chilblains.
Hahnemann, in his preface, refers to Bergius' recom
mendation of the drug in intermittent fever. His own
symptoms present a very fair picture of the paroxysms of
this disease. He notes especially the chill, saying that he
has seen it gradually increasing for eleven hours after taking
the medicine, and then declining during twelve hours more.
Capsicum has always occupied a high place in the homeo
pathic treatment of ague : it is found especially useful
when the sweat coincides with the heat, instead of fol.
lowing it.
As an irritant of skin and mucous membrane Capsicum
most resembles Argentum nitricum , Croton, and Euphor
bium .
Hahnemann recommends the 9th dilution, but nearer
approaches to the crude drug have generally given complete
satisfaction .

* Dr. Ringer writes : - “ I can endorse Dr. Lyon's strong recommenda

tion of Capsicum in dipsomania . Ten -minim doses of the tincture obviate
the morning vomiting, remove the sinking at the pit of the stomach, the
intense craving for stimulants, and promote appetite and digestion . It
should be taken shortly before meals, or whenever depression and craving
for alcohol arises."
 CARBON SULPHIDUM . 219

Under the name of

Carbon sulphidum
I have now to speak of the substance known since its dis
covery as Liquor Lampadii and Alcohol Sulphuris. Pereira
calls it Carbonii Bisulphuretum ; it appears in Hering's
Materia Medica as Carburetum sulphuris, and in Allen's
Encyclopedia as Carboneum sulfuratum .. As, therefore, it
has no recognised name in homeopathic practice, I have
thought it well to designate it according to the analogy of
the bromides, treating carbon as an indeclinable noun.
Provings of this substance have been made by Knaf in the
old school, and by Pemerl and Koch in the homeopathic
ranks-- altogether on thirteen persons. Its use in the
manufacture of vulcanized india - rubber has led to many
observations of the effects of inhaling its vapour. These
have been collected by Delpech in the Union Médicale for
1855.* The materials thus specified, with others of like kind ,
have been worked up by Dr. Hering into one of the
monographs of his volume of Materia Medica, and by Dr.
Allen, who gives 750 symptoms to the drug.
Carbonic sulphide is aa stimulant anæsthetic like ether, and
can be given for this purpose by inhalation . It has too
many inconveniences, however, to allow of its use in practice.
If long inhaled it causes local irritation, besides headache and
giddiness ; and the workers in it become impotent. The
effect which most arrests my attention is the occurrence of
long - lasting ringing in the ears, with or without deafness.
This was experienced by one of those who took it internally ;
but it is especially prominent in a record of the effects of
inhaling the vapour given by Mr. T. Wilson in the seventeenth
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. Neither
Hering nor Allen have used this observation. It has led,
moreover, to the only homeopathic application of the drug of
See an account of his observations by Dr. Jousset, in Brit. Journ. of
Hom ., sv.
250 CARBO .

which I am aware, Mr. Wilson stating that he has cured a

case of tinnitus aurium of some standing with it in the first
dilution .
I should have mentioned that our preparation is a solution
in alcohol, in which the drug is freely soluble.
I have now to speak of Charcoal, animal and vegetable,
which we will designate generically as
Carbo .
By all writers on Materia Medica charcoal is regarded as
utterly inert, and Hahnemann is laughed at by Pereira for
filling thirty -five pages with the symptoms produced by the
millionth of a grain . The learned writer has omitted to
notice that this millionth of a grain was obtained by tritura
tion, and that it is to this process that Hahnemann ascribes
the development of such extensive powers in a substance
inert in its crude state. This is a question of fact, and
cannot be decided à priori. The same answer is to be made
to Dr. Faivre, who, in l’Art Médical for 1869, relates some
experiments with finely pulverized charcoal with negative
results.* The division of the particles caused by his process
is not to be compared to that of the Hahnemannic tritura
tion.
We will take first in order
Carbo animalis . - Hahnemann directs this to be prepared
from ox - leather. Noack and Trinks recommend in preference
meat - beef, veal, or mutton-as the substance to be car .
bonized. It probably matters little. The potencies are, of
course , prepared by trituration .
A pathogenesis of Carbo animalis, made with the third
trituration, appears in the sixth volume of the Reine Arznei-.
mittellehre. It consists of 188 symptoms from Hahnemann
himself and a Russian physician named Adam, with three
from Rust's Magazin. Hartlaub and Trinks subsequently
proved the drug, presumably in the same form ; and gave
See Brit. Journ , of Hom ., xxviii, 232.
 CARBO . 251

their results in the shape of 254 symptoms in the third

volume of their Arzneimittellehre. The final pathogenesis in
the second edition of the Chronic Diseases incorporates these
two series of symptoms ; so that only the remaining 283 of
its 728, which are from Wahle, belong to the doubtful class
we have already denoted .
That animal charcoal, even in its crude state, is inert can
hardly be affirmed in the face of the observations cited by
Hahnemann from Rust's Magazin, to which Dr. Hempel in
his article on the drug adds some more of like tenor. Daily
doses of from four to twenty -four grains have not only dis
ordered the stomach and bowels, but have caused the break
ing-out of copper -coloured eruptions on the face, of acne, and
of boils ; and have developed painful swellings and indura
tions of the parotid and mammary glands. In these very
glandular enlargements, especially when of aa scirrhous nature,
Carbo animalis has a repute of old which the homeopathic
school has sustained , extending it also to syphilitic glandular
engorgements, as bubo. It is also considered by some as
having a dynamic controlling influence -- distinct from its
chemical action - over low states of the system characterised
by putrescence of the fluids and secretions. Noack and
Trinks, who praise it here, ascribe to it a deeper and more
penetrating action than its vegetable brother. Dr. Drury
commends it, in aa high dilution , against offensive lochia.
The action of Carbo animalis on the glands is somewhat
like that of Conium and Hydrastis.
With the exception mentioned, the lower attenuations have
generally been used.

Carbo vegetabilis is generally made from poplar, beech, or

birch wood ; and raised to the third potency by trituration.
Vegetable charcoal was proved , Hahnemann tells us, with
doses of some grains of the third trituration . In the sixth
volume of his Reine Arzneimittellehre he gives 720 symptoms
so obtained by himself and three others. A later patho
252 CARBO .

genesis in the second edition of the Chronic Diseases extends

the list to 1189 ; and, as no additional fellow provers are
mentioned, the new symptoms must be understood as ob
served upon patients in the usual way.
Since the power of charcoal to check fermentation and to
absorb gases has been known, it has been largely used in
dyspepsia attended with acidity and flatulence. Dr. Madden ,
moreover, from experiments upon his own person , has been
led to the conclusion that, swallowed in substance, finely
powdered charcoal acts as a mechanical detergent of the
mucous membrane, dislodging any superfluous mucus it may
have formed, and so aiding digestion . * All these are extra
medicinal effects of the drug, of which we may and do avail
ourselves in common with our brethren of the old school.
But, over and above them , we have dynamic uses of Carbo
vegetabilis which make it an important remedy. One of
these singularly coincides with its chemical action , I mean
its power over flatulence, whether existing alone, or associated
with acidity and heart -burn. It is my own favourite remedy
for this condition ; and I have seen the most distressing
oppression and dyspnea, recurring after every meal, removed
by its use. I think it most suitable for cases where the gas
distends the stomach more than the intestines, and where the
tendency is to diarrhoea rather than to constipation - in this
last feature contrasted with Lycopodium . Then there is an
adynamia for which Carbo vegetabilis is specific. It is non
febrile, therein contrasted with that of Arsenic , and is
attended by evidences ( such as blueness and coldness) of
defective circulation and imperfect oxydation of the blood .
When such a condition exists in affections of the aged, and
rin advanced stages of typhus after the temperature has
fallen, Carbo is an effectual rallier. But I cannot agree
with those who see a Carbo adynamia in the collapse of
cholera, and recommend it to be given therein .
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 64.
 CAULOPHYLLUM THALICTROIDES . 233:

There is, moreover , a good deal of evidence as to the

power of Carbo vegetabilis over affections of the respiratory
organs. Wurmb and Caspar esteemed it highly at the
Leopoldstadt Hospital in chronic hoarseness and in emphy-
sema .
Bähr thinks it to be depended upon in chronic
neglected bronchitis, with emphysema, and in the suppurative
stage of pneumonia. Dr. Bayes says that in chronic bron
chitis of aged people, with profuse expectoration or profuse
accumulation of mucus, with imperfect power of expectoration ,
blue nails, and cold extremities, Carbo vegetabilis from 6th
to 30th is most useful.
Dr. Thayer, of Boston , speaks highly of it in epistaxis, and
Teste in soreness, itching, and burning of the female genitals
with sexual excitement - both of which affections are in the
list given by Hahnemann of curative indications for the drug.
Lycopodium , Veratrum album , and Carbolic acid are the
medicines which may be most advantageously compared with
Carbo vegetabilis. The latter has in the gastric sphere the
same singular coincidence of chemical and dynamic action.
The sixth attenuation is that which I have almost always
used, though I find the third trituration act capitally in the
dyspepsia of old people.

I have now to give an account of one of the inany indi

genous medicines with which our American brethren have
lately enriched the Materia Medica, the

Caulophyllum thalictroides,
<<
popularly called “ Blue cohosh " Squaw root.” The
former name hints at its similarity to Actæa racemosa
(black cohosh ) ; the latter points to its main sphere of
action .
We prepare a tincture from the root. Caulophyllin is also
much used .
There is a proving of Caulophyllin by the indefatigable
254 CAULOPHYLLUM THALICTROIDES

Dr. Burt in Hale's New Remedies, together with all that is

known regarding the drug.
The " Squaw root,” as may be supposed, acts chiefly on the
uterus. No woman having proved it, I am unable to state
what are its physiological effects upon the organ . Dr. Hale
thinks that it is primarily excitant; and that it is homo
pathic to dysmenorrhea, uterine cramps, spurious labour
pains, abortion , and after -pains. It seems especially suitable
to affections of the motor nerves sympathetic with uterine
irritation (Actæa includes also reflex hyperæsthesia ). It has
been found useful in chorea , in spasms from suppression of
the menses, and in uterine paraplegia. Cases are also on
record in which it has strengthened labour- pains, where
Ergot could not be given on account of the rigidity of the os
uteri ; and in which flooding after abortion , and long-con
tinuing lochia after parturition have been checked by its use .
In “ false pains ; ” to avert threatened abortion, or to conduct
it, when inevitable, to a safe conclusion ; and to prevent
premature labour, Caulophyllum is much recommended : also
as a preparatory medicine for women who have difficult
labours .** It will probably continue to be given indiscrimi
nately as a uterine remedy, until a proving on a woman or
the accumulation of clinical experience enables its precise
place to be fixed . I have myself had no experience with it.
The proving of Dr. Burt reveals a marked power on the part
of Caulophyllum of causing acute rheumatoid affections of
the small joints, especially those of the fingers. Putting this
and its uterine action together, it becomes probable that
Caulophyllum will rank with Pulsatilla and Sabina as a
remedy for that peculiar form of chronic rheumatism de
scribed by Dr. Fuller as secondary to uterine disorder. It
has made some brilliant cures of inflammatory rheumatism of
* “ Dr. Helmuth informs me,” writes Dr. Hale, " that he has used the
Caulophyllin successfully for the removal of those discolorations of the
skin of the face common in women with menstrual irregularities or uterine
disease."
 CAUSTICUM . 255

the hands and fingers, and is said by Dr. Ludlam to be more

effectual in females than in males thus affected .
I have already pointed out the close relations of Caulo
phyllum with Actæa racemosa , Pulsatilla, and Sabina. It has
some points of analogy also with Secale.
The Caulophyllin, in the triturations from the 1st to the
6th decimal, has been most frequently used.
I have last to speak of

Causticum ,
and, before I go any farther, must endeavour to satisfy your
natural curiosity as to what the medicine so named may be.
Its history is as follows : - In the Fragmenta de viribus
Hahnemann published 30 symptoms as obtained by him from
a substance he called “ Acris tinctura.” He stated that it
was an alcoholic solution of the principle to which quick -lime
and the alkalies owed their causticity. He obtained it by
digesting caustic potash in alcohol, and then saturating with
vinegar to neutralize the potash. As he found a medicinal
agent still present in the solution, he strangely enough consi
dered this to be the caustic principle of the alkali. In the
second volume of the second edition of the Reine Arzneimit.
tellehre ( 1824) we find a more extensive pathogenesis of this
preparation now named “ Aetzstoff- Tinctur - Tinctura acris
sine Kali.” 106 symptoms have been observed from it by
Habnemann , and 201 from seven fellows ; and in a very long
preface the chemical reality of the principle of causticity is
defended . In the third edition (1833) the drug does not
appear, for the reason that in the meanwhile Hahnemann had
seen reason to class it among his antipsorics. Its patho
genesis had accordingly been transferred to the Chronic
Diseases, in the first edition of which ( 1830) it appears with
1014 symptoms, including those which he had already pub
lished . It is now called simply “ Aetzstoff ” or “ Causticum ,”
and is directed to be prepared by adding to quick -lime a
256 CAUSTICUM .

solution of some previously fused Bisulphate of Potash , and

distilling. The product, he says, is hydrated causticum . In
the second edition of the Chronic Diseases are incorporated
some hundreds of symptoms communicated by Nenning to
Hartlaub and Trinks, making a total of 1505.
What, then, is the real chemical nature of this preparation
of Hahnemann's ? Dr. Black has had it analysed , with the
result of finding it to be a weak solution of caustic potash of
varying strength. He recommends that the dilutions shall in
future be prepared from the liquor potassæ of the British
Pharmacopæia . Twenty parts of this with eighty of distilled
water constitute, according to him, the first centesimal dilu
tion of what we might now more correctly style Kali caus
ticum.
You will decide for yourselves whether to adopt Dr. Black's
suggestion , and will then look carefully to see if you get the
same effects from his preparation as are ascribed to Hahne
mann's. In the meantime, the British Homeopathic Pharma
copeia does wisely, I think, in adhering to the latter. It
directs the attenuations to be made with rectified spirit.
The main sphere of the therapeutic action of Causticum has
consisted in paralytic affections and laryngo -tracheal catarrhs.
It was in facial paralysis that it first acquired reputation ;
and as the affection, when local, readily admits of spon
taneous recovery, it is not easy to prove that any medicine
has cured it . But when so careful an observer as Bähr
expresses no doubt of its anti- paralytic virtues, we may
wisely avail ourselves of them ; and now with the more con
fidence that we have reason to believe that it is potash we are
using. For it has been well ascertained of late years that
potash has a poisonous action quite distinct from that of any
alkali, and that this is especially seen in the way it paralyses
the spinal cord and the heart.
What are the special paralytic conditions in which Caus
ticum will prove efficacious has not been determined. I can
only speak with certainty of it in local paretic states of the
 CAUSTICUM . 257

larynx and bladder. In the former we have the weighty

testimony of Dr. Meyhoffer. “ The absence," he writes, “ of
harmonious co -operation of the vocal cords is one of the most
permanent and persevering symptoms of deficient innervation
in laryngeal catarrh ; persons recovering from this affection
cannot exert the vocal organ to the full compass of the voice,
nor use it in all its modulations, for at least two or three
weeks after every trace of capillary turgescence has subsided ;
and any overstrained exercise of the vocal apparatus, or
oratorical display, at this period tends to perpetuate the
defect. This kind of diminished vitality is naturally of great
consequence to singers and public speakers : fortunately, a
specific remedy is at hand in what Hahnemann introduced
into medical practice as Hydrated Causticum ( Kali causticum ),
which often in a single dose removes this functional weakness
of the glottis, as well as that resulting from over-exertion ."' *
Of the same character is that which Dr. Guernsey notes of
the cough of Causticum , that the expectoration only comes up
far enough to be swallowed : there is no power to spit it out.
In the bladder we have a similar condition. It is especially
shown in that, when the patient coughs, there is involuntary
emission of urine during the paroxysm . This is a well-known
indication for Causticum. But it has also been useful when
such paresis of the sphincter exists without cough, as in the
enuresis of children and old persons .
Independently, moreover, of associated paretic symptoms
(which may be absent) , Causticum is aa medicine of undoubted
power in laryngo -tracheal catarrh. Dr. Black's experience is
decisive here. He relatest cases of long -lasting catarrhal
aphonia, and of violent and fatiguing cough, in which its
administration effected speedy cure.
There is another property of the salts of potash which seems
to have found its homeopathic application by means of Caus
Chronic Diseases of the Organs of Respiration, I, 56 ; see also a case of
aphonia, with facial paralysis, by Dr. Kafka in L'Art Medical for June, 1875.
† Brit . Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 470.
17
258 CAUSTICUM .

ticum. This is the increase of the urinary solids, first noticed

by Golding Bird with the acetate, and since confirmed by Dr.
Austin Flint with the nitrate, and by Rabuteau with the
chloride. The late Mr. Freeman has put on record some
cases where convalescence from typhoid fever was retarded by
the passing of large quantities of urine loaded with lithic
acid and lithates.* The excessive tissue waste revealed by
this symptom was checked by Causticum, and the recovery
went rapidly on . In a similar case occurring in my own
practice, where after parturition this state of the urine was
associated with debility, low spirits, anorexia, copious sour
perspirations, and persistent aching of the mammæ, speedy
change for the better ensued upon the administration of this
remedy. It should be thought of for that rare form of
disease, azoturia .
For possible further applications of Causticum I may refer
you to Hahnemann's list of morbid conditions in which it has
been useful; to a paper read upon it before the British
Homeopathic Society by Mr. Nankivell, with the discussion
following it and to Teste's article on the medicine, in which
he lauds it in the treatment of smallpox. Some of the
traditional uses of caustic potash and the liquor potassæ are,
moreover, highly suggestive, especially Mr. Brandish's expe
rience with his alkaline solution in scrofula. Dr. Bayes says
that he has always found good results from Causticum in
constipation , when the evacuation is very solid, is expelled
with great difficulty and straining, and presents a shining
appearance, as if greased .
Gelseminum corresponds best to the paralytic symptoms of
Causticum ; Bromine and Spongia to its laryngeal action.
All potencies have been used ; but Dr. Black's success was
generally obtainable with the first and second decimal.
* Monthly Hom . Review , x.
+ Annals, ii.
 LECTURE XV .

CEDRON, CHAMOMILLA, CHELIDONIUM, CHIMAPHILA, CICUTA,

CINA AND SANTONINE .

I have to -day for my first subject a drug which we

know as
Cedron .
It is the fruit of a South American tree, of doubtful
species ; but identifiable through its extensive native use. A
trituration of the seeds is the best preparation, according to
Dr. Casanova ; but the British Homeopathic Pharmacopeia
directs a tincture to be prepared from the whole fruit.
Cedron has been proved by M. Teste on three persons in the
sixth dilution ; and by Dr. Casanova on fourteen in the crude
substance and first three decimal triturations. The full report
of the former's experiments may be read in his Matiére
Médicale : the results of the latter are given by him, with
much clinical observation, in a series of papers published in
the fifth and sixth volumes of the Monthly Homoeopathic
Revier .
It appears that in Panama Cedron is considered a specific for
the bites of the venomous serpents of the country, and for its
endemic intermittents. Teste's three provers each experi
enced a daily paroxysm closely simulating ague. The chills
came on towards evening ; there was little or no sweat, but
much cerebral congestion . Teste reports brilliant results
from Cedron in the intermittents of Martinique and Walla
260 CHAMOMILLA .

chia . A vial of the sixth attenuation, given by him without

label to a friend visiting the island, attained quite a repu
tation as a secret remedy. Dr. Casanova's experiments,
pathogenetic and clinical, point in the same direction . He
considers Cedron a true anti-periodic, like Quinine and
Arsenic ; and gives it in neuralgia and other disorders, as
well as in ague, when appearing in regularly recurring
paroxysms. The periodical recurrence of the symptoms in
his provers led him to this practice. It checks, he says , the
tendency to miscarriage, when this repeats itself at the same
epoch. He thinks it infallible in the endemic intermittents
of damp, warm , and low marshy climates.
I am myself accustomed to use Cedron with success in
obscure cases of recurring chills and fever, such as those we
meet with in persons returned from tropical countries. I
have generally used the second dilution. Dr. Casanova says
that residents in hot climates are much more susceptible to
its action, pathogenetic and curative, than others differently
situated .

My next medicine is the humble and familiar plant

known as
Chamomilla,
by which we mean the common Matricaria Chamomilla, not
the Anthemis nobilis. The homeopathic tincture is pre
pared from the whole plant.
Chamomilla early attracted Hahnemann's attention. A
pathogenesis of it appeared in the Fragmenta de viribus, con
taining 272 symptoms observed by himself, and three from
authors . In the third volume of the second edition of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre, there are 189 additional symptoms of
his own , and 30 observed by Stapf in a girl of nineteen, after
drinking some large cupfuls of Chamomile tea . We have
two later provings of the drug, one by Dr. Hoppe of Basel,
on himself and three others, related in the thirteenth, four
 CHAMOMILLA . 261

teenth, and fifteenth volumes of the Vierteljahrschrift; the

other by the Vienna Provers ' Union . *
With one of the Vienna provers (Dr. Schneller) I fully
agree that “ Chamomilla affects primarily the nervous
system .” Its pathogenetic effects are faint and obscure : but
its curative power is well -defined . It is when the sensory
and excito -motor nerves are morbidly impressionable that
Chamomilla is so valuable a medicine. Thus Hahnemann
says, “ Chamomilla seems to moderate excessive sensitiveness
to pain, or the disturbing influence which pain exercises in
some persons upon the mind : for this reason it relieves many
of the morbid symptoms produced by the excessive use of
Coffee and narcotic substances, and is, on the other hand , less
beneficial to those who remain patient and composed during
their sufferings. I consider this observation of great import
ance.” It has even cured neuralgia of the limbs where this
great “ nervousness was present : the pains are much worse
at night than by day. The impressionability of the excito
motor nerves which Chamomilla so powerfully modifies shows
itself in spasms and convulsions, as in pregnant women and
young children . In the former Chamomilla effectually re
lieves the false pains, and the cramps and painful twitches of
the legs, which trouble the later months of pregnancy. In
the latter it plays a most important part during the process
of dentition . It probably has some specific action on the
pulp of the teeth itself in the gums, for it gives great relief
in ordinary inflammatory and rheumatic face -ache. But
when in dentition the nervous system becomes irritated, then
for restlessness, fretfulness, and spasms there is no medicine
like Chamomilla . Even the diarrhea of teething will some
times yield to it ; and when other remedies are strongly indi
cated, Chamomilla in alternation will help them. The
influence of Chamomilla extends to the emotional nerve
centres also : and the effects of anger and active vexation
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., vi, 267, 270.
262 CHAMOMILLA .

even when these go beyond the nervous system , and show

themselves in bilious disturbance and jaundice — are under its
control. The ideational centres — the cerebral hemispheres
themselves — Chamomilla does not reach . Hence when true
brain symptoms and epileptiform convulsions occur during
dentition, Chamomilla must give place to Belladonna .
That Chamomilla - mainly, as we shall see, in very infini-.
tesimal doses - should have this " sedative " action is a little
.

curious, as it has lately been brought to light that the essen

tial oil which it has in common with the Anthemis nobilis is
a potent subduer of the normal reflex excitability. This is
much dwelt upon by Dr. Phillips, who thus finds himself able
to continue the homeopathic uses of the medicine in the
doses sanctioned by his present fellows.
Hahnemann has, in his preface and notes ( neither of which
are at all faithfully rendered in Dr. Hempel's version ),
several other valuable remarks on special actions of Chamo
milla ; which, with his whole proving, I would commend to
your careful study. I have embodied the substance of his
remarks in what I have now said , and indicated the general
sphere of the drug's action . I will only add two of Dr.
Guernsey's “ characteristics ” for its use, which are , -in adults
“ spiteful, sudden, uncivil irascibility ,” of which they are
sometimes conscious, but say they cannot help it ; and in
children a refusal to be soothed save when carried about.
The analogues of Chamomilla are Agaricus, Belladonna,
Coffea, Hyoscyamus, Ignatia, and Stramonium .
The facts about the dose of Chamomilla are very curious.
I have hitherto been in the habit of stating as the general
experience of homeopathic practitioners — as it is certainly
my own — that Chamomilla begins at about the sixth potency
to manifest its great curative powers, and may often be given
with advantage as high as the 18th. I had in my mind
recorded expressions of opinion on the part of Drs. Madden, *
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 530.
 CHELIDONIUM MAJUS . 263

Bayes,* Hempel,t and Holcombet -to say nothing of

Hahnemann's own recommendation of the 12th as the best
attenuation . Dr. Black $ has since cited some testimonies on
the other side ; but these, when examined , show that it is not
the lower dilutions of the drug that give satisfaction , but the
infusion, the mother tincture, or at the highest the first
decimal. The only writer quoted by Dr. Black as using the
3rd decimal and centesimal is Dr. Clotar Muller, and he says
that “the curative results were but seldom indubitable.”
The conclusion seems to be that Chamomilla is one of those
drugs whose crude and infinitesimal action are identical ; but
that there is an intermediate stage where dilution simply
weakens. This is my reading of the facts ; but the question
is a difficult one at the best.

I have now to bring before you a drug whose exhaustive

proving of late years will probably give it a prominent place
among our remedies. I refer to the greater celandine,
Chelidonium majus.
The tincture is prepared from the fresh plant in the usual
manner .
The proving to which I refer is by Dr. Buchmann of
Alvensleben . It appears in the seventieth volume of the
Allgemeine homöopathische Zeitung, and is translated in the
twenty -third and two following volumes of the British
Journal of Homeopathy. Hahnemann had previously given a
short pathogenesis of the plant in the fourth volume of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre, consisting of 28 symptoms from
himself, 122 from eight fellow -observers, and 6 from
authors. Teste also had contributed some provings on four
* Applied Homeopathy, sub voce Chamomilla.
+ Mat. Med ., sub voce .
1 United States Med . and Surg. Journ ., i , sub voce.
$ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 793.
264 CHELIDONIUM MAJUS .

persons with the sixth dilution , and the Vienna Provers'

Union had experimented with the drug. All the results of
the foregoing, and some symptoms from other sources, are
incorporated by Dr. Buchmann with his own - making 1456 in
all - in the "schema ” of the drug with which he concludes
his record. I should have said that his experimenters were
eighteen in number ; and that nearly all took full doses of
the mother tincture . *
Our knowledge of Chelidonium , which has been gradually
building, is perfected by what Dr. Buchmann has now so ably
done. Led by the doctrine of signatures, the middle -age
physicians supposed that this bitter yellow juice so nearly
resembling bile must be beneficial in disorders of the liver.
The disciples of Rademacher have shown that here at least
the signature has proved a true guide, by adducing numerous
cases of jaundice, gall-stones, and acute and chronic hepatitis
cured by the drug. Then comes Dr. Buchmann's proving to
show that this remedial power obeys the law of similars.
The action on the liver is very strongly marked in his
proving. Pain, both acute and dull, and tenderness of the
organ ; pain in the right shoulder ; stools either soft and
bright yellow , or whitish and costive ; and deeply tinged
urine, appeared in nearly every prover. In three the skin
became yellow or dark ; and in one regular jaundice was set
up . Correspondingly, Chelidonium bids fair to take high
rank in our school as an hepatic medicine. You will find a
number of cases illustrative of its value at the end of the
proving. Further experience, however, is required to enable
us to define its exact place here in relation to other hepatic
remedies, as Mercurius, Bryonia, Phosphorus, and Podo
pkyllum . Dr. Guernsey says that a pain at the lower angle
* The fairness and impartiality of Dr. Phillips' book may be estimated
by his statement that “exact experiments are altogether lacking as to the
physiological action of the juice of Chelidonium ." Yet he is acquainted
with Dr. Buchmann's work, as he cites him as a therapeutic authority on
the drug.
 CHELIDONIUM MAJUS . 265

of the right scapula, running into the chest, is characteristic

of it.
Next, the experiments instituted by Teste led him to credit
Chelidonium with a specific affinity for the respiratory organs.
The two disorders to which he thought its symptoms specially
pointed were pertussis and pneumonia. Subsequent experi
ence has confirmed his predictions of its value. In whooping
cough it has been found to act specially well after Corallium ,
as indeed he recommends. And it really seems a most valu
able accession to our remedies for pneumonia . It is especially
useful where the right lung is affected, and the liver in
volved. Teste thinks it is better than Bryonia in those cases
where the patient is of blond complexion and placid tempera
ment. All this you will find confirmed and made clear by
Dr. Buchmann's experiments and observations. He shows
that in animals poisoned by the drug the lungs are found
generally engorged, sometimes hepatized. He developes in
several of his provers all the symptoms of an incipient pneu
monia. And he contributes from his own practice several
cases of the disease, in which the beneficial action of Cheli
donium was most manifest. He corroborates also the value
of the medicine in whooping -cough, and points to the spas
modic cough induced by it as showing its homeopathicity.
Lastly, the new proving of Chelidonium reveals a hitherto
unknown influence exerted by it on the kidneys. Besides the
general symptoms of renal irritation, an examination of the
urine in one case showed the presence of tube -casts, of in
creased uric acid , and diminished chloride of sodium. The
mischief in this case was so considerable that ædematous
swellings of the extremities occurred . We have as yet had
little or no experience with Chelidonium as a renal remedy.
Besides the facts embraced under the above headings, I
would note in the proving the severe pains in the knee - joints,
and the itching hæmorrhoids, developed in one prover (both
occasionally symptoms of hepatic disorder) ; the dark redness
80 often appearing on the cheeks, hinting embarrassment of
266 CHIMAPHILA .

the pulmonary circulation ; the chills and fever ; the inflamed

scrotum and eyelids ; the itching of the skin , generally in
patches ; and the periodical toothache. Dr. Buchmann also
points out a group of symptoms which show an action on the
diaphragm . He esteems it very highly in all external neu
ralgiæ , and gives a good case of prosopalgia cured by it. In
the twentieth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy
you will find some cases of supra -orbital neuralgia cured by
Chelidonium , in which also its curious affinity for the right
side of the body appears ; and in the twenty -eighth volume
there is a case of my own, in which a migraine of this kind,
evidently hepatic in origin, was removed by it. I have only
to add, that cases are appended to Dr. Buchmann's proving
which hint at other fields of action for Chelidonium as yet
unexplored. You must not suppose, from Hahnemann's 66th
symptom , that gonorrhea is one of these. It occurred in the
case he cites only as a re-appearance after suppression, while
Chelidonium was being taken for the swelled testicle which
had resulted .
Bryonia and Phosphorus are the analogues of Chelidonium .
The dose for adults seems to range from the first to the
sixth decimal ; from the sixth to the twelfth for infants.
I must now briefly mention one of the American indigenous
remedies, the “ Pipsissiwa,” or

Chimaphila .
A tincture is prepared from the fresh leaves, bruised .
Chimaphila has not been proved : all our information
concerning it is derived from Dr. Hale's article in his New
Remedies.
There is one and one only point of interest about this
plant. It appears to have a specific influence upon the
urinary passages, like that of the Pareira brava and the
Buchu, which you know well, but which we have not hitherto
used. Dr. Hale has found it a valuable medicine in cases of
 CICUTA VIROSA . 267

dysuria with mucous sediment in the urine ; and has cured

gleet with it. Dr. Holland relates a good case of chronic
eystitis, in which it proved curative after many medicines had
failed .*
Besides Pareira and Buchu , Chimaphila may be compared
with Cannabis sativa, Cantharis, Copaiba, Eupatorium purpu
reum, and Uva ursi.
From one to five drops of the mother-tincture appear to be
the most suitable dose.

Of the three very similarly acting Umbelliferæ , we have

already discussed the Æthusa cynapium. The Enanthe
crocata is not at present used in our practice : but we have
some knowledge of the third, the long-leaved water hem
lock, or
Cicuta virosa .
The tincture is made from the root.
Cicuta was proved by Hahnemann :: the pathogenesis is in
the sixth volume of the Materia Medica Pura . It contains
36 symptoms of his own, 168 from three fellow -provers, and
37 from authors most of which were observed in eight
children poisoned by the plant, as related by Wepfer in his
treatise “ De Cicutâ .” The poisonous effects of the plant are
fully described by Hempel in his article .
From these cases of poisoning it appears that Cicuta
causes tetanus as manifestly as does Strychnine. But it has
this difference, that it affects the brain no less than the spinal
cord . The cerebral symptoms are various : but in their
intensest form they approximate to those of epilepsy, which
indeed in poisoning by Enanthe crocata is exactly simu
lated. The proving adds little to the knowledge of Cicuta
we thus derive from toxicology, save that it shows its
power of causing local tonic spasms, as of the neck and
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxii, 84 .
-268 CINA .

jaw , and of developing pustular inflammation on the face and

hands .
Cicuta has not been much used in homeopathic practice,
chiefly in epilepsy and pustular eruptions. Of the latter
Hahnemann says—“ I have cured chronic confluent impetigoes
of the face, with burning pains, by means of one or two
doses of a small portion of a drop of the juice, letting three
or four weeks intervene ere I followed up the first (when
necessary ) with the second ." Teste calls attention to its
double action on the nervous system and the skin ; and sug
gests it as a remedy for cerebral and other nervous affections
resulting from repercussion of eruptions. It is good for
biccough and belching when of a spasmodic character : I
have myself cured an obstinate and long -lasting affection of
this kind with it, and it has relieved such symptoms when
occurring in cholera.
Dr. Lilienthal has a paper on Cicuta in the Hahnemannian
Monthly for April in the present year (1875) , in which he
directs attention to the great hyperæmia of brain and cord
found in animals poisoned by it, which die with convulsions,
followed by paralysis. No wonder, he says, that so many of
our practitioners consider Cicuta nearly a specific in menin
gitis cerebro - spinalis.
The analogues of Cicuta are Aconite, Hydrocyanic acid, and
Strychnia .
It seems to have acted well in all dilutions.

I have last to speak of the medicine we call

Cina.
This is the “ worm -seed " of commerce and domestic prac
tice ; and is said to consist of the unexpanded flower -heads
of one or two eastern varieties of Artemisia. From it the
now well-known Santonine is obtained . We triturate the
latter, and make a tincture of the former.
The proving of Cina is in the first volume of the Reine
 CINA . 269

Arzneimittellehre. It contains 290 symptoms from Hahne-

mann and five others, and 11 from three authors.
Cina has derived its reputation and its popular names from
its activity as a vermifuge. That it does, especially in the
form of Santonine, kill and expel the round -worm and
occasionally the thread - worm , there can be no doubt ..
Hahnemann refers to this use of it ; and very justly , as
it was given in doses of from ten to sixty grains, warns
against its danger. He adds, moreover , that worms in
healthy children cause little inconvenience ; while in the un
healthy they are a symptom of the morbid condition , and
will continually recur after expulsion until this is remedied .
He says nothing about the dynamic use of Cina in helmin
thiasis. But his experiments and citations revealed the
curi fact, that Cina produces on the healthy body nearly
ous
if not quite all those symptoms whose presence leads us to .
suspect the existence of worms . There are the dilated pupils ,
with dimness of the sight and twitching of the eyelids ,
the ravenous appetite, the pinchings in the abdomen , the
itching at the nose and anus, the frequent micturition , the
spasmodic cough with vomiting , the restless sleep , the fever,
and the twitchings in various parts of the body. General
convulsions also have frequently resulted from the large
doses of Cina or Santonine given as a vermifuge. Homeo
pathic practitioners thus came to give this drug in minute
doses to children suffering from worm -affections. They calcu
lated that, on the principle similia similibus, it might at least
relieve the symptoms caused by the presence of the parasites ,
though they themselves remained in situ . It fully answered
their expectations ; and a curious result followed . By some
inexplicable influence these infinitesimal quantities of Cina
not only relieved worm -symptoms, but promoted the death
and expulsion of the worms themselves . This occurred so
often, that at length it became the recognised homeopathic
practice to dispense with vermifuges, and to rely upon
dynamic remedies alone. The pathology of the day was
270 CINA .

altogether favourable to this course , as it regarded worms as

a morbid product of the organism .
The results of such practice have been partly beneficent,
partly disastrous. It has saved thousands of children from
nauseating and poisonous worm -medicines, which for them
were quite needless, as Cina and similar remedies in minute
doses did all that was required . But, on the other hand, by
making treatment by the latter only a sort of orthodoxy in
homeopathy, it has left hundreds of others unrelieved, when
a few grains of Santonine or an injection of salt or quassia
would have delivered them from their tormentors . With the
demonstration, now fully made, that worms are in all cases
introduced from without and act as foreign bodies, the
reasonableness of destroying them directly, where possible,
necessarily follows. This has been seen by most homæo
pathists ; and our later Domestic Guides have ceased to dis
play the helpless inanity into which Hering's falls on the
subject.
Our wisdom, therefore, in the treatment of helminthiasis
is first of all to give the patient the possible benefit of the
dynamic action of medicines, that is, unless any other be dis
tinctly indicated, of Cina. It seems beneficial in all varieties
of the malady, as Dr. Bayes says that he has repeatedly
killed tapeworm with it, as well as the lumbrici and ascarides
for which it is generally given ; and it acts omni dosi, from
the twelfth dilution of Cina of this writer to the twentieth of
a grain of Santonine recommended by Dr. Dyce Brown .
What the former will sometimes do is illustrated by an
excellent case of Dr. Hamilton's in the thirteenth volume of
the British Journal of Homoeopathy, where chorea depended
on the presence of ascarides, and was cured by their expul.
sion by this means. But, unless such measures speedily
succeed, then-if the symptoms are at all urgent - we are
bound to resort to the usual parasiticides, among which
Santonine, especially against the round -worm , holds a promi
nent place.
 SANTONINE . 271

This is the most important sphere of the action of Cina.

But Hahnemann, saying that it has more valuable properties
than those which make it a vermifuge, indicates it in whoop
ing cough, and in certain intermittents accompanied by
vomiting and canine hunger.. Teste commends it in the
flatulent colic, without diarrhea, of older children1 ;
Bayes in the gastralgia of empty stomachs.
Of the dose of Cina I have already spoken ; and I am
unable to mention any true analogue to it.

I must now dwell somewhat upon

Santonine, whose properties, though involved in those of
Cina, are much more marked when it is administered separately.
One of these is enuresis. As Dr. Ringer writes— “ Santonine,
if given frequently, is very apt to occasion a great difficulty
in holding the water, and thus it is not uncommon for chil
dren, if they take much of this medicine, to wet the bed, and
to be obliged to pass the water very frequently, or even to be
unable to hold it during the day.” He characteristically adds :
“ this remedy is sometimes able to stay the nocturnal inconti
9
nence of urine of children .” I had suggested that it did so
when, as often happens, worms were the cause of it ; but in
his fourth edition Dr. Ringer says that this is no necessary
element in the cases .
A more important and interesting action of Santonine is
that which it exerts upon the eyes. The xanthopsia caused
by it has long been noticed, and has of late years been fully
studied by Dr. Edmund Rose.* He finds the derangement
of vision produced by it to be, in the first degree, “ colour
blindness ;" in the second degree, "colour-confusion,” which
he considers to be the condition known as Daltonism ; and, in
full intoxication, hallucinations. His inquiry into the causa
tion of these phenomena leads him entirely to reject the theory
-of which there is no proof — that the xanthopsia is due to a
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxvü, 214.
272 SANTONINE .

staining of the media of the eye. He sets it down rather,

connecting it with the other phenomena, as a result of con
gestion of the retina, which the ophthalmoscope demonstrates
to be present. The colour - confusion and hallucinations he
traces to a corresponding influence on the optic nerves and
the visual centres respectively. The latter he connects with
the hallucinations of other senses, the (evidently cerebral)
vomiting, and the spasms of the cranial nerves, as showing
that the drug acts directly on the brain .
Such investigations seemed at first sight to have rather a
scientific than a practical interest. But Dr. Dyce Brown,
who is always very quick at seeing the therapeutic inferences
to be drawn from physiological observations, has done this
good work for Santonine. In conjunction with an oculist
friend, Dr. Ogston, he put the drug to the test as a remedy
for several of the deeper -seated affections of the eye. The
results, which were published in the British and Foreign
Medico-Chirurgical Review for 1871 , are very striking.* Of
>

the 42 cases treated 31 were cured or improved ; and these

included choroiditis, retinitis, atrophy of the optic disc, pure
amblyopia, and retinal anæsthesia. The ultimate influence
of Santonine on the brain was manifest, for cerebral ambly
opia and paralysis of the motor oculi were greatly benefited,
and concomitant headaches removed. In one case, moreover,
of undoubted double cataract vision was greatly improved
after some months' use of the Santonine ; and with reference
to this Dr. Brown tells us that in some experiments of Dr.
Ogston's “ it several times happened, especially when young
kittens were employed, that within a few minutes after the
animal was killed, a dense cataract developed itself in the
lenses of both eyes. Within half an hour these parts became
quite opaque, the opacity remaining very marked after the
removal of the lens from the eye.” “ It seldom ,” he says,
“ occurred to any extent in the eyes of adult animals, nor has
See also Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 445 .
 SANTONINE . 273

it ever been observed to occur during life.” Nevertheless,

unless cataracts are of spontaneous origin in recently defunct
kittens, the tendency of Santonine to produce them is un
doubted ; and that is enough for homeopathy.
I am not aware whether any further testing of the power of
Santonine in eye disease has been carried out. But Dr. H.
Wood reminds us that in 1862 MM . Guérin and Martin had
recommended it in amaurosis, especially in that following
acute choroiditis and iritis. (I had referred to the record of
their experience in the second edition of this Manual.) I
myself rely on it with much confidence in that hyperæsthetic
and hyperæmic condition of the organs which comes on from
continuous fine work, as in seamstresses .
The action of Santonine on the eyes is comparable with
that of Atropine and of Digitalis.
In Dr. Ogston's cases a grain of the drug was given every
night. But Dr. Brown's first patient, whose improvement in
sight while taking Santonine for worms first drew his atten .
tion to the subject, bad doses of the twentieth of a grain only.
It must be remembered that two grains have proved fatal to
a child .

18
 LECTURE XVI .

CINCHONA AND QUININE .

We will address ourselves to -day to the consideration of

the famous Peruvian bark and its no less famous alkaloid ,
quinine. I have had some doubts as to the designation I
should use for the bark itself. Cinchona is the scientific
name of the botanical genus, and perpetuates the memory of
its introducer into Europe : by this term it has always been
known in England. But if you look into the continental
medical Latin of the last two centuries you will find it called,
if not " cortex Peruvianus," then “ china-china." This is
said to represent its native appellation , “ china ” meaning
bark , and the reduplication implying that it is bark of barks.
By this name it has passed into the nomenclature of other
countries : it is still “ china- china ” in Italy , it is “ quin
quina " in France, and " china ” or “ chinarinde ” in Ger
many. Under this last title it stands in the Materia Medica
Pura ; and as China it is known in the school of Hahnemann
throughout the world. I cannot refrain from using the
familiar term when speaking of the special homeopathic uses
of the drug; though for historical and general purposes I
sball best - lecturing as I do in England and for Englishmen
-call it
Cinchona .
The homeopathic tincture is directed to be prepared
from the yellow bark , which was that mainly used in the
provings.
 CINCHONA . 275

Hahnemann has bestowed great attention on Cinchona.

Its first pathogenesis appears in the Fragmenta de viribus,
where it is credited with 122 symptoms of his own, and 99
from authors. In the third volume of the last edition of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre Hahnemann's own symptoms have
increased to 427, and he has pressed no less than 21 provers
into his service, obtaining from them 575 symptoms. There
are also given 141 observations from authors, 35 in number.
You may well be surprised at hearing that so many ill- effects
have been ascribed by medical writers to a substance of by no
means virulent nature ; and an examination of the originals
justifies the hesitation to accept them . A good many are the
obvious mechanical effects of the large quantities of powdered
bark in those days introduced into the stomach ; and are
often so represented by their reporters, and stated to have
disappeared after an emetic. These are quite inadmissible
as pathogenetic effects of the drug ; and I think that the
mass of those that remain are no less so, for another reason .
The opponents of the use of bark in intermittents, and also
those who maintained that it should not be given without the
previous use of evacuants, alleged many instances of harm
resulting from its administration . To all these phenomena
( including asthma, jaundice, and dropsy ), whether aggrava
tions of the paroxysms, their transformation into other shapes,
or results of their suppression, Hahnemann has freely helped
himself to complete the Cinchona - pathogenesis. Influenced
by his then theory of homeopathic cure, he considered all
these to be symptoms of the Cinchona-disease, by the induc
tion of which in a mild form even cases suitable for it were
cured. The objection to such a doctrine is that no Cinchona
disease of the kind has ever been induced upon other than
aguish subjects. So that the phenomena are at the utmost
effects of the compound influence of the drug and the disease ;
and are more probably due to the latter alone, the bark
acting only as a disturbing influence of no specific kind. I
would therefore recommend you to expunge from the patho
276 CINCHONA .

genesis of Cinchona all the symptoms which Hahnemann has

cited from authors, save the few I shall mention. For the
study of the symptoms of his fellow -provers I can recommend
you a paper by Dr. Langheinz, “ On the relation of Peruvian
bark to Intermittent Fever, ” which is translated from the
Vierteljahrschrift in the twenty - fourth volume of the British
Journal of Homoeopathy. He arranges some of them accord
ing to the time of their occurrence after the ingestion of the
drug, and so reconstructs a fair picture of the effects as they
followed one upon another. He also relates the proving of
Cinchona by seven of Jörg's pupils, and some other experi
ments with it .
Hahnemann found Cinchona in use for two great purposes,
-as a tonic, and as a remedy for intermittent fevers. He
proved it to discover on what principle it so acted. That it
caused the febrile paroxysm was the Newton's apple which
led him to formulate similia similibus as the law of specific
therapeutics. Of this I will presently speak at length. But
he also found that it produced in the healthy a peculiar kind
of debility ; and that its “ tonic " properties in disease, when
analysed, were demonstrably applicable to weakness of this
very sort . When used with precision, under the guidance of
the homeopathic rule, he stated that Cinchona would do all
its strengthening work in infinitesimal doses, as high even as
the twelfth dilution. The special kind of debility for which
it is suitable he indicates as that which results from ex
hausting discharges or other loss of fluids. There is here
emptiness of the blood-vessels and much loss of energy, but
therewith considerable erethism of the nervous and even of
the circulatory system . In this condition, where the weak
ness is itself the disease, Cinchona is curative, because
homeopathic to it. Hahnemann reprobates in a forcible
manner the pernicious practice, prevalent in his day, of giving
bark for every kind of weakness, and where the disease which
caused the weakness was still present. He acutely pointed
out that the best results which were obtained from it were
 CINCHONA . 277

seen in the convalescence from acute disease, and were just

correlative to the super-added debility caused by the
depleting treatment then pursued . For all this you should
read the preface to his proving, which is a master -piece of
observation and reasoning.
This thought of Hahnemann's was as original as it was
brilliant and fruitful. It was a pure induction from his
provings. The only attempt made at precisionising the tonic
properties of bark in former times was the doctrine that it
acted best in a relaxed state of the solids. Here its large pro
portion of tannin may have come into play. But Hahnemann's
doctrine was far more definite, and at once fixed its genuine
and certain range of action . It will not cure anæmic debility
like Ferrum , or nervous debility like Phosphoric acid . But
in that occasioned by loss of blood ; by diarrhea, diuresis, or
excessive sweating ; by over - lactation ; and by too great and
rapid expenditure of semen - it is a most effectual remedy.
Nor does it fail us when the discharge is a morbid one al
initio, as in excessive suppuration. " In all these cases,"” says
Hahnemann , “ the other symptoms of the patient generally
correspond to those of China .” In one particular especially
they do so , viz. in their tendency to pass into a hectic condi
tion. We have here the series of chill , heat, and sweat
>

which we shall see to be characteristic of the drug, and which

gives it its place in the treatment of ague. It cannot be too
strongly impressed on the mind that China is the great anti
hectic. It is to this febrile condition what Aconite is to tho
synochal and Arsenic to the typhoid form . But whether with
hectic or without, remember that debility from drain on the
system is the sphere of the tonic action of Cinchona ; and
within it you will find it manifesting some of the most beau
tiful curative powers known to the art of medicine . These
extend , moreover, to other effects of the same cause- to head
aches and various pains and neuroses, to hydræmia, and even
to dropsy .
For want of such aa defining thought, bark and its alkaloid ,
278 CINCHONA .

hitherto indiscriminately used as tonics, seem now falling out

of favour. All recent physiological experimentation , more
over, has gone against the notion that the drug exerts any
primarily roborant action on the system . Quinine was found
by Briquet ( as we shall see ) to lessen the force of the heart's
action and diminish the arterial pressure, and also to im
poverish the blood . The latter action has been studied more
fully by Binz, with the result of proving Quinine to be the most
potent of protoplasm -poisons, so that even in minute doses it
kills the white corpuscles. While such facts indispose the
practitioners of traditional medicine to use Cinchona as a
tonic, they support its credit in the school of Habnemann.
They show also, as Dr. Drysdale has pointed out,* how just
was Hahnemann's discernment of the precise kind of debility
to which bark is homeopathic. To check the formation of
the blood by killing its white corpuscles is to produce a
similar,effect on the system to that occasioned by actual loss
of the vital fluid .
We enter upon a larger and more difficult question when
we come to the action of Cinchona as a remedy for intermit
tents . Is it anti-periodic, whatever be the origin of the
malady so recurring ; or is it anti-malarial, whatever be the
form assumed by the disorders so caused ? What is the
measure and extent of its efficacy , and what the dose and
time of its administration ? Lastly, what is the rationale of
its action ? These are some of the points presenting them
selves for discussion .
And, first, as to the facts. There can be no doubt of the
specific power of bark over ague. It was the one bright spot
in the medicine of Hahnemann's day, which led him to
believe that if he could find the rule of its action he would
have the clue to a better therapeutics. It is still cited - as
by Dr. Latham -- as the cardinal instance of the “ cure ” as
distinguished from the “ treatment” of disease . † And it has
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 283.
+ British Medical Journal, Aug. 17, 1861.
 CINCHONA . 279

been shown that “ the disappearance of ague, as a cause of

mortality in this country , exactly coincides with the introduc
tion of Cinchona bark into general use ;" so that while
between the years 1653 and 1660 there died in England
of ague 10,466 persons, in the corresponding septenary
period from 1733 to 1740 the deaths from this cause were
only 31.
And now , how is this curative power of Cinchona and its
alkaloids to be characterised ? If it is anti-periodic, it will
manifest itself more or less in all affections of periodic recur
rence : if it is anti-malarial, it will hold good to some extent
in all results of malarial poisoning. The action will spread
laterally along whichever plane it occupies in ague itself.
Well ; the testimony to the general anti-periodic virtues of
Cinchona is somewhat conflicting. Hahnemann says that
“almost all typical diseases may be suppressed by powerful
doses of China ; ” and, though in his Materia Medica he
condemns the practice as pernicious, it appears from some
papers included in Dr. Dudgeon's collection of his Lesser
Writings to have been formerly his own, and fairly successful.
66
Pereira speaks of it as beneficial ” and “ serviceable " in
many cases where “ a paroxysm (of pain, spasm, inflamma
tion, hæmorrhage, or fever) returns at stated intervals ;" but
he does not use such qualified language of its power over
ague. Trousseau and Pidoux will not allow that it is an
anti-periodic. If periodicity, they say , belongs to an affec
tion which has not malaria for its cause, bark often fails to
influence it. Of our latest writers, Wood states that
Quinine has no less power over non -malarial than over mala
rial periodic affections, so far as checking their recurrence is
concerned ; but that the benefit is often temporary only .
Ringer speaks less distinctly on the subject. He commends
it in periodic, but also in non-periodic neuralgia ; and writes
-“Quinia appears to be useful in some, but quite useless in
Russell, Clinical Lectures, p. 355.
280 CINCHONA .

other cases of intermittent hæmaturia .” Phillips is decided

on the other side. “ It is a stereotyped remark in medical
works,” he writes, “ that the more exactly a nervous (or
indeed any other) disease conforms to a regular type of
periodic exacerbations, the more surely will quinine prove
useful. As a general proposition this is untrue. It is only
when the neuralgia is due to actual malaria that the rule
holds ; and in the case of recurrent inflammation, or of hectic,
there must be either malaria or else septic poisoning at work,
or else we shall find this maxim fail us." It is evident from
his whole work that our late colleague speaks from a survey
of others' experience, and not from the brief space of his own
merely ; otherwise his statements of fact could not be allowed
much weight. He makes a good point, however, when he
points to the inefficacy of quinine in migraine, however
strictly periodic its recurrence .
On the other hand, the testimony to its efficacy in malarial
poisoning, whatever form it may assume, is loud and uniform .
To begin with, it is an almost certain prophylactic. Its use
renders possible the penetration into certain regions which
would be otherwise deadly to the traveller. Then it is no less
effectual whatever be the type of the malarial fever, whether
intermittent, remittent, or continued . Dr. Maclean shows
that by far the best treatment for the incessant vomiting and
distressing pain in the head which occur in bad remittents is
to give quinine freely. Again, when malaria manifests itself
in quite different ways, as in dysentery on the one side, in
neuralgia or even epilepsy on the other, quinine is the one
and most effective remedy.
I think, then, we may conclude that Cinchona cures ague by.
its specific antidotal influence against the malarial poison .
But what kind of antidote is it ? Does it act after the
manner of a chemical neutralizer ? or does it set up in the
parts affected an action incompatible with that of the poison,
and is this action of a similar or an opposite kind ? The
former alternative has of late been widely advocated. Since
 CINCHONA . 281

the researches of Binz and others have shown how potent a .

poison is quinine to all protoplasm , the hypothesis has been
framed that malaria consists of an abundance of low organ
isms, and that bark antidotes it by destroying these. I think
that several considerations concur to render such a theory
untenable. One is that the dose of quinine which suffices to .
cure an intermittent is often far too small to affect the vitality
of the supposed microzymes. I will not bring forward homeo
pathic experience, but will content myself with referring to
the treatment of ague by subcutaneous injection of the drug.
It is found that by this method doses of two grains each,
repeated every fourteen or twenty days, are generally suffi
cient to check the paroxysms and prevent relapse : the
maximum quantity required in the worst cases was from
six to ten grains, and the maximum frequency of injec
tion every day or two .* Still better results have been
obtained : but I give these as easily credible. On the
other side, Dr. Buchanan Baxter has ascertainedt that the
vitality of microzymes is suspended only, not annihilated,
by quinine in such proportions as the animal body can
bear in its blood. But the crucial test is afforded here, as
previously, by the extension of the plane of action . Quinine
is not the only protoplasm -poison. Strychnia and Mercuric
chloride have the same property in less degree ; yet they have
little or no power over intermittents. So also bark is not the
only febrifuge ; but the other substances which resemble it in
this
power exercise no common destroying agency over infu-
soria. Some have it, as Dr. Baxter has ascertained with
regard to beeberine and picric acid ; but no one would think
of ascribing it to willow -bark, black pepper, chamomile, and
cobwebs, whose repute against intermittents is nevertheless
considerable .
I cannot therefore assent to the hypothesis that bark cures,
ague by destroying in the blood the microzymes which cause
* Lond. Med. Record , ii , 333.
+ Practitioner, xi, 342.
282 CINCIONA .

it. My conclusion accordingly must be that it antidotes

malaria by setting up , in the parts that are or would be
affected by it, an action incompatible with its own . In this I
am supported by the high authority of Bretonneau, of Trous.
seau and Pidoux, and of the elder Wood. “ I know," the
latter writes, “ no better explanation of the anti-periodic
property than that which supposes it to depend upon the
powerful influence exercised by the remedy upon the nervous
centres, through which probably the paroxysms are produced.
Every consideration in connection with the peculiarities of
regular intermittent diseases leads to the conclusion, that the
paroxysms are produced by an influence acting through the
cerebral centres , without which the result would not take
place. Now, if these cerebral centres can be preoccupied by
a strong impression from some other source, they may be
rendered insensible to the morbid influence, and the paroxysm ,
therefore, set aside. Quinia is characterised by its disposition
to act energetically upon certain nervous centres, which are
probably the same as those through which the cause of the
disease operates. Quinia, therefore, interrupts the succession
of the paroxysms; and , as they are sustained , probably, in
part at least, either by habit, or by some chain of morbid
action passing insensibly from one paroxysm to the succeed.
ing, the interruption is either permanent, or continues until
the original cause may reassume, in some mysterious way, its
original activity, and produce a relapse in the now unguarded
system .”
We are thus prepared for the question whether bark is
homeopathic to ague, whether this prerogative instance of
specific therapeutics conforms to the principle similia similibus.
This question is sometimes put thus - Can the drug cause, has
it ever caused, an intermittent fever ? But even though we
had to answer in the negative, the homeopathicity of the
remedy would not be disproved. It is rare that drugs can
excite concrete diseases ; and it is quite unnecessary for the
practical carrying out of the rule “ let likes be treated by
 CINCHONA . 283

likes ” that they should do so. For this, and for the demon
stration of similarity in a remedy, it is sufficient that it is
seen working in the same direction as the disease ;—that it
affects the same parts, and—so far as its action goes — in a
similar manner .
Now of such homeopathicity of bark to ague we have
abundant evidence. I will not dwell on mere assertions,
though several of these might be cited from out of the ranks
of the old school to corroborate that of Hahnemann . * But

from the elaborate discussion of the question carried on by

Dr. Langheinz, and also by Dr. Rogers in his tractate entitled
The Present State of Therapeutics, I will cull two or three
actual observations bearing on the point.
The first is a case of tertian fever in a child, which was
treated by grain doses of quinine every two hours during the
interval. After the third dose there appeared a rigor, fol.
lowed by heat and sweat ; the whole attack lasting forty -five
minutes. The same thing happened after each succeeding
dose ; and one of the attacks was witnessed by the reporting
physician, who describes it. It was a typical ague on a small
scale, with thirst during the heat. The tertian paroxysm re
curred once at the expected time, but in less force ; and then
came no more. The bark fever also, after growing slighter and
slighter, disappeared ; and the patient became and continued
well. But it may be said that this was not a pure experiment,
as the patient was already suffering from ague : and if I were
endeavouring to prove that Cinchona can cause intermittent
fever in the healthy , the objection would be valid. When, .

however, my object rather is to ascertain the direction in

which it acts, the modus operandi of its curative working, then
such an observation is most illuminative. It shows the drug
at every dose exciting a miniature paroxysm of the disease ,
until the susceptibility of the system for both bark and
malaria was exhausted . It tells the same story as that which
* See the testimonies of Auber and Goedorf in Langheinz' article, and
of Weitenweber and Götz in Monthly Hom . Review , x, 760.
284 CINCHONA .

we shall hereafter meet with when we speak of Thuja ; wheny

we shall see this medicine, given continuously to a sufferer
from warts, excite two crops of new ones, whose dying away
was followed in a short time by the disappearance of the old
enemies.
But we have further testimony. In Dr. Langheinz' paper
you may read a case in which a patient convalescing from
typhoid, and taking half- grain doses of quinine, had what the
reporter calls “ aa well-marked fit of ague ” after each dose.
The medicine was omitted for ten days; but on its being
prescribed again , in the form of decoction of bark , the same
phenomena followed . Three other cases are cited by this
writer in which quinine given to patients affected with other
diseases caused in them a single or (as in one of them) a
double paroxysm of fever, i. ee.. of the typical sequence of chill,
heat, and sweat. If you will have experiments on the healthy,
you will find some there from Wittman , in which the same
phenomenon appeared ; or I may refer you to Hahnemann's
provings of Cinchona and Noack's (of which I shall presently
speak ) of Quinine, in which it was of no unfrequent occur
rence.. If you wish for such experiments on a larger scale, I
may refer you to the report - cited by the same writer - of the
health of the workmen in the quinine manufactory at Frank
fort -on -Maine. From this it appears that most of those who
are much exposed to the dust of the bark sooner or later
get an attack of fever, consisting of one violent paroxysm of
chill and heat ; after which they seem to become insus
ceptible.
I will sum up in the words of Trousseau and Pidoux.
“ Daily observation, says M. Bretonneau, proves that Cin
chona given in a strong dose determines, in a great number
of subjects, a very marked febrile movement. The characters
of this fever, and the epoch at which it manifests itself, vary
in different individuals. Most frequently tinnitus aurium ,
deafness, and a sort of intoxication precede the invasion of
this fever ; a light rigor then is added, a dry heat accom
 CINCHONA . 285

panied by headache succeeds the first symptoms, subsides

gradually, and ends in moisture. Far from yielding to new
and stronger doses of the drug, the fever caused by the
absorption of the active principle of Cinchona does not fail to
be exasperated.” I am sorry to say that these authors do
violence to history and truth by claiming this discovery for
Bretonneau, instead of acknowledging it as Habnemann's .
Now it is no answer to such facts as these to point to the
€Iceptional nature of their occurrence , —to bring forward the
number of patients, workmen , and even experimenters in
whom Cinchona and quinine have produced no such symp
toms. Dr. Drysdale has well shown that there are two
classes of drug -effects, which he names absolute and con
tingent ; the one resulting in almost every subject of the
influence, as the mydriasis of Belladonna, the other requiring
for its development a special susceptibility on the part of the
prover, and, like disease itself, not to be produced at will. It
is symptoms of this contingent order which most closely
resemble the phenomena of idiopathic disease, and avail best
for the working out of the rule similia similibus. Of such
kind is the fever of bark . I think that the evidence I have
adduced is quite sufficient to show that the aguish paroxysm
may be and has been induced by the drug ; and this is
enough to outweigh hundreds of instances in which it has
failed so to act. It is enough, moreover — since there are no
opposite facts on record which suggest that it is antipathic
-to justify the conclusion that it is homeopathic to the
disease it cures. *
This question is of so much importance to the argument for
and against homeopathy as a therapeutic method, that I have
gone into it at greater length than I should otherwise have
been justified in doing. But its determination has also a
practical bearing on the use of the remedy. If it cures ague
* The absence of subsequent periodical recurrence of the fever induced
by bark is of no importance to the question. The deficiency can be supplied
in treatment by the repetition of the dose.
286 CINCHONA .

by destroying microzymes, it must be given in large and

frequently repeated doses so as to saturate the blood up to
their perishing point. If it acts by giving the nervous system
a shock, as Dr. Wood seems to suggest, it is best adminis
tered in single full doses to cinchonism shortly before each
expected paroxysm . But if “ substitutive ” here, as else
where, means homeopathic," * then no such violent mea
sures are required ; and we need only proportion our doses to
the severity of the disease, giving them with moderate
frequency during the interval. And again, if Cinchona cures
in virtue of its homoeopathicity, it will cure most effectually
when most homeopathic, and less so as the type of the fever
departs from that which it causes ; till at length we shall
come into a region where it will not cure at all, even though
it may, if given in sufficiently large doses, suppress the
paroxysms.
Now these corollaries just express the experience of homæo
pathists in the treatment of intermittent fever. Hahnemann
says , in his preface to Cinchona, that, when all the symptoms
correspond, a single small dose of bark given directly after
the attack, previous to the elements of a new paroxysm having
accumulated in the system , will cure the ague then and there.
He does not here specify what these corresponding symptoms
must be. But from some of his notes to the proving we may
gather them to be — thirst just before and after the hot stage ;
commencement of the paroxysm with some accessory symp
toms, as palpitation, anxiety, nausea , great thirst, canine
hunger, pressing pain in the hypogastrium, or headache ;
distension of the external veins ; and rush of blood to the
head. Dr. Bayes, who saw much of ague in Cambridge,
cured the majority of his cases with the third and higher
dilutions. He states that “ in intermittent fever the symp
toms which most strongly indicate china are where the chills,
the hot stage, and the perspirations are generally evenly and
* See p. 117.
 CINCHONA . 287

well marked , and there is a distinct intermission of compara

tive health. There is a loud rumbling in the head, sense of
constriction from ear to ear over the vertex, great sensibility
to currents of air, sinking at the epigastrium, a feeling of
emptiness without hunger or of hunger easily appeased ,
contractive pain under the lower left ribs, sometimes a sense
of fluttering, mental depression with irritability .”
I have entered into theseminutiæ because it is by attending
to them that the most brilliant cures are made, and with the
smallest and least frequent doses. But I am bound to say
that I think the good to be done by attempting such precise
practice is far outweighed by the disadvantages it entails.
In the pursuit of the exact simillimum through an intermin
able list of not always trustworthy symptoms time is lost and
disappointment incurred . Bark is passed by because the
correspondence is not exact ; whereas it is sufficiently close to
enable it to cure quite satisfactorily, even if the doses must be
a little larger and the repetitions rather more frequent than
would otherwise be necessary. The result is that Dr. Rogers
is able to make a point against homeopathy, that its treat
ment of ague is, by the statements and confessions of its own
adherents, not so successful as that of the old school ; and this
simply through its neglect of quinine. It ought not to be
possible to substantiate such a charge, as I must confess Dr.
Rogers to have done ; and I must again advocate, as I have
often done before, the treatment of all recent and simple
agués with quinine alone. When these display the regular
series of chill, heat, and sweat, unmarked by any special
phenomena, the remedy is pretty well infallible. The objec
tion that it merely “ suppresses the paroxysms” and does not
really cure the disease has no weight here ; for in such recent
cases the paroxysm is the disease, and in its repeated recur
rence lies all secondary evil which may occur. Nor can any
harm be done, even in case of failure, while moderate dosage
is practised ; and here, as quinine cures rapidly if at all, little
time need be lost before resorting to other means.
285 CINCHONA .

I am glad to be supported in this position by one of the

veteran homeopathists of the United States, Dr. Jeanes . In
a paper recently read before the Philadelphia Medical Society
on “ Intermittent Fever,"" * he maintains that the power of
Cinchona and its alkaloid to check the progress of ague is a
great boon to humanity, and one of which we should not
hesitate to avail ourselves, even though we have to use
massive doses for the purpose. On the other side I fully
concur in all that has been said, by Dr. Hirscht and others,
on the evil of forcing a suspension of the paroxysms by need
lessly large doses-using, as Dr. Drysdale puts it, a surplus
of physiological action, instead of suffering the whole of this
to be absorbed into the therapeutic operation. Such practice
is especially to be reprobated in cases of long standing, where
cachexia is established . Here the more minute and spe
cialised homeopathic treatment has time to be carried out,
and repays the trouble ; and in this bark is rarely indicated
for chronic intermittents .
I have now said enough upon the two great actions of
Cinchona, its tonic and its febrifuge properties. But over
.and above all this, Cinchona does good service to us in
several ways, most of which Hahnemann himself has pointed
out. It appears from the pathogenetic symptoms, he says,
that it will cure only a small number of diseases. He first
specifies the kind of ague in which it is febrifuge and of
weakness where it is tonic, as we have already seen . And
then he goes on
1. “ The primary effect of China is to open the bowels ;
hence it will cure certain kinds of diarrhæa, provided the
other symptoms correspond ."
This is a curious effect of a substance containing so much
tannin , yet it occurred repeatedly, both in Hahnemann's and
in Jörg's experiments, and has been observed also in the
workers in bark at the Paris manufactories, I have re
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxii, 723.
† Ibid ., xxv, 106.
 CINCHONA . 289

peatedly verified it in practice, both in acute and chronic

diarrhæa. The latter must be of a passive and painless
character to call for it ; when enteritic or ulcerative it
requires Arsenic and remedies of that kind . But in acute
summer diarrhea — not that of autumn, which is more profuse
and bilious - severe griping pain is nearly always present ;
and the first effect of the China is to relieve this, after which
the flux itself ceases . China is also one of the remedies
for lienteria .
2. “ The frequent and morbid excitement of the sexual
organs, resulting in an involuntary emission of semen, and
caused even by slight abdominal irritations, is permanently
relieved by China.”
Sexual excitement was noticed by several of Jörg's provers
and by Hahnemann himself : Dr. Phillips says that all the
alkaloids of Cinchona will cause it. The condition Hahne
mann describes is just that left behind by a too frequent
repetition of such excitement, especially of an abnormal
kind .
3. “ Pain which is excited by merely moving the affected
parts, and which gradually rises to the most fearful height,
has frequently been cured by a single drop of the twelfth
dilution of China, even when the attack had returned fre
quently. ” In another place he notes of the pains of China,
that they are “ increased by motion , and especially by touch
ing the affected parts ; and also characterised by this, that
the pain, though it may have disappeared for the moment,
may be excited again by simply touching the parts, when it
frequently becomes horrid and intolerable."
Neuralgic and rheumatic pains, having these features, may
be controlled by China ; they are said to be specially of
drawing character .
Hahnemann indicates China also in certain forms of
jaundice, in humid gangrene of the outer parts, and in suppu
ration of the lungs. And lastly he lays down that “ bark
will scarcely ever be useful except where the nightly rest of
19
290 QUINIA .

the patient is disturbed similarly to the disturbance which

characterises China ;" of which disturbance he says : “ China
is characterised by restless night-sleep, with dreams causing
anxiety and starting ; when waking from these dreams one
finds it difficult to come to one's senses, or the anxiety
continues."
I have cited these remarks of Hahnemann's at length, as
he has evidently studied China very closely. Its patho
genesis abounds with references from one symptom to
another, which only appear elsewhere under Pulsatilla.
There is little to add to the enumeration of the curative
powers of the drug. I may mention its value, however, in
that relaxed state of the ligaments of the joints which makes
them ( especially the ankles) ache after any exertion. I may
say, moreover , that it seems to excite the ovario -uterine
functions so as to convert the existing catamenia into a
hæmorrhage — the blood coming away in black lumps. It is
thus homeopathic to aa form of menorrhagia itself, as well as
to the debility it occasions.
As an anti -malarious agent, Cinchona compares with
Arsenic and Cedron ; as a tonic, with Ferrum .
For dose Hahnemann recommends the twelfth dilution . I
confess, however, that save for nervous conditions I have
never found it necessary to go above the first ; and for the
hectic of suppuration the mother -tincture seems to act
best.

essary to speak of one

In connection with Cinchona it is necess
at least of its alkaloids, which, for consistency of nomen
clature, should be called — as now it often is
Quinia . — This substance, commonly used in the form of a
sulphate and called Quinine, has, since its discovery in 1820,
>

gradually taken the place of the powdered bark as a remedy

for ague. It has, moreover, manifested such decided
physiological properties of its own, that it has been thought
worthy of a special ! proving, which it has received at the
 QUINIA . 291

hands of Dr. Alphonse Noack , of Lyons. I have not access

to the original record ; but a full account of his experiments
is given in the first volume of the Revue de la Matière
Médicale Spécifique. Much information , moreover, as to the
physiological action of Quinine is contained in M. Briquet's
Traité de Quinquina ( Paris, 1853) .
So far as the pathogenetic properties of Quinine have
relation to its use in intermittent fever, they have already
come before us . But experiment reveals other actions
exerted by it, which have to be considered and utilised ; while
its extensive use as a medicine makes it necessary that we
should form a precise apprehension of what can be wisely and
well done with it.
1. Let us first consider the group of phenomena entitled
“ cinchonism ," and readily induced by full doses of Quinine.
Their seat is the head, with the eyes and ears. There is deaf
ness, with tinnitus — the latter taking the form of buzzing, sing
ing, roaring, or hissing ; there is disturbed visual function, even
to blindness ; and in the brain itself we have headache, with
fulness, weight and tension, vertigo, and sometimes epistaxis.
Accompanying these phenomena are evident signs of con
gestion , as flushing of the face and redness of the eyes and
ears. One of Noack's provers describes his headache as
intense towards evening, when the arteries of the head began
to beat with violence, as if the skull was about to burst. His
face was burning ; there were noises in the ears and sparks
before the eyes. Dr. Hammond has lately examined pre
cisely into this matter. In a man who had taken ten grains
the retina and tympanum were found sharing in the hyper
æmia of the outward parts ; and in a cinchonised rabbit the
same condition was seen in the brain , when a hole was made
in the cranium . In animals, and even in the human subject,
meningitis may follow , with delirium and convulsions ;
and with or without this complication collapse and coma
succeed the stage of excitement when the dose has been
large.
292 QUINIA.

Such effects as these are in the ordinary mode of treatment

simply an unpleasant, but to some extent necessary evidence
that the system is thoroughly affected by the drug. For
homeopathy they are direct therapeutic indications. They
should give us a valuable medicine for some forms of head
ache, and for congestive disorders of sight and hearing.
The drug deserves to be more used here than it has been ; it
is a favourite remedy in my own hands.
2. Next, the survey of Noack's provings -- in which seven
persons took part, using full doses-shows several pretty
uniform effects of the drug. One of these was tenderness
and pain in the vertebræ , especially in the dorsal region ;
another was the pain and tension at the stomach which
Trousseau and Pidoux also note. The most constant
phenomenon was a highly lateritious state of the urine, which,
on cooling, deposited numerous crystals which the observers
neglected to analyse, but whose description pretty certainly
identifies them as consisting of lithic acid .
It is not easy to give these effects of the drug any physio
logical expression. But they must be borne in mind as
indications for it in ague or other disorders to which it is
found adapted. The state of the urine mentioned led me
once to give it with striking success, though no stronger than
the third dilution, in a case of daily occurring supra-orbital
neuralgia, as I have related in the twenty -sixth volume of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy.
3. M. Briquet, besides investigating fully the phenomena
of cinchonism , ascertained by exact experiment the influence
of Quinine on the circulation. He found that while small
and rare doses seemed to increase the force and frequency of
the heart's action, the more intense and sustained effect of
the drug was enfeeblement of the circulation , with diminished
arterial pressure and lowered temperature. In this he has
been supported by subsequent observers. He concluded that
Quinine could not have any of the tonic properties of
Cinchona, but should rather be used as a " hyposthenisant "
 QUINIA . 293

in febrile and inflammatory states. His conclusions have

been carried out by his native confrères, especially in the treat
ment of acute rheumatism . That there is something specific
about it here may be inferred from the fact that Dr. Jousset
reports it very efficacious in the small doses of the school of
Hahnemann ; and that Sydenham is rightly cited by Hahne
mann as stating that the continued use of bark sets up a sort
of “ scorbutic rheumatism ,” shifting in situation, and alter
nating with internal pains.
4. The ideas of those who use Quinine as a tonic, supposing
such to be its primary influence on the system , have sustained
a still graver shock from the experiments of Binz, to which I
have already referred . Briquet had found that Quinine,
while it increases the fibrin , diminishes the number of the red
corpuscles of the blood. Binz has further ascertained that
in virtue of its power as a protoplasm -poison it paralyses
and kills the white corpuscles, so that they never become red :
it also lessens the ozonising property of the blood. As a
tonic, therefore, it is under a cloud ; but, on the other hand,
German and English practitioners are now following suit
with the French, and, taught by Cohnheim the important
part played by the white corpuscles in inflammation, are
giving Quinine in large doses to restrain their activity.
Cinchonism, however, is not found аa. desirable addition to the
patient's sufferings ; so , as alcohol is found to hinder its
development, it is given simultaneously. Thus the unhappy
subject of inflammatory fever, to whom Aconite and cold
water would be the greatest of boons, is now to be dosed with
Quinine and brandy. I frankly say that for myself in such a
case I should prefer the lancet. I am not objecting to using
Quinine in such disorders as pyæmia and leucocythæmia ; and
in the former of these it seems to have proved strikingly
efficacious. The quantity given need not be very considerable,
as Binz finds that one part in four thousand, or even less, will
effect the purpose .
5. Another indiscriminate and , I think, unwarranted use of
294 QUINIA.
Quinine seems to be receiving its death -blow ; I mean its
prescription for every kind of neuralgia. Dr. Anstie
coincides with foreign observers in rejecting it in all but
malarious neuralgia, making a doubtful exception in the
case of the supra-orbital form when otherwise caused. It
was this nerve which was affected in the case of my own
which I have cited : it is probable that more extensive
provings would show that the drug had an elective affinity
for it.
This is all I have to say of Quinine. The other alkaloids
of Cinchona -- cinchonine, quinidine, and cinchonidine - seem
to have nearly equal power over ague. Pereira says that the
headache of cinchonine is more frontal than that of Quinine,
and that it readily affects the heart, causing præcordial pain
and debility , even to syncope .
 LECTURE XVII .

CISTUS, CLEMATIS, COCA, COCCULUS, COCCUS CACTI , COFFEA ,

COLCHICUM , COLLINSONIA .

I must begin this lecture by giving you a short account of

the Rock - rose , or

Cistus Canadensis .
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
The Cistus has been proved, mainly in the tincture and
first dilution, under the superintendence of Dr. Hering. His
pathogenesis, with the medical history of the plant, is given
entire by Dr. Hale in his New Remedies.
It was the great popular reputation of the Rock -rose in
scrofula which led to its being proved . The symptoms (which
we have only in schema- form ) shadow forth , faintly indeed,
the manifestations of the diathesis in the eyes, ears, nose , and
lymphatic glands ; and in such affections it has been used
successfully by homoeopathic physicians. Dr. Bradshaw has
cured white swelling of the knee -joint with it.* I am myself
much more impressed with its effects upon the throat. The
sense of dryness there is more marked in the pathogenesis of
Cistus than in that of any other medicine I know , -except
perhaps Belladonna. The following symptom , too, looks very
like shingles. “Below the right shoulder -blade, extending
round to the front of the body, was a very much inflamed
spot about the size of the palm of the hand, painfully sore to
the touch ; soon after pimples began to appear on this spot
* Monthly Hom . Rev., xiii, 38.
296 CLEMATIS .

in a large group, they caused violent burning. Later, a

pain went from this belt - like spot to the left hip, and into
the groin ; the pain was like rheumatism , motion increased
it."
Cistus is said to require a Magnesian soil ; and Dr. Hering
suggests that it may be related to that mineral as (for
similar reasons) Belladonna is to Lime and Pulsatilla to
Iron.
The first dilution has been used successfully in scrofula .

If the next name on my list were as valuable a medicine as

its sister is a beautiful flower, it would be precious indeed.
Clematis

is prepared from the leaves and stems of the Clematis

erecta .
Our only pathogenesis of Clematis is that contained in the
second edition of the Chronic Diseases : it consists of 145
symptoms observed by Hahnemann and six others, and 6
taken from Stoerck's pamphlet, of which more anon .
We thus know little or nothing of the physiological action
of Clematis ; for of the symptoms referred to Stoerck two
only are possibly pure, and these speak simply of diuresis and
perspiration. But Hahnemann says in his preface that " it
will be found curative in a number of affections which have
their origin in the abuse of Mercury and are complicated
with psora, in foul eruptions of the head and general surface,
in several urinary troubles, in stricture of the urethra, and
various kinds of very troublesome inflammation of the eyes."
He goes on to say that Stapf has found it helpful in orchitis
and indurated swellings of the testes following mismanaged
gonorrhoea ; and then refers to Stoerck's previous experiences
with the drug .
This well-known physician published , in 1769, a tract
entitled Libellus, quo demonstratur, herbam veteribus dictam
 CLEMATIS. 297

Flammulam Jovis posse tuto et magna cum utilitate exhiberi

ægrotantibus. His cases are given in the fourth volume of
Frank's Magazin ; and include ulcers and excrescences,
secondary syphilis, “ scabies humida," arthritis, and head
ache. The drug appears to act much like Dulcamara and
Sarsaparilla in such affections, setting up diuresis and
diaphoresis, increasing the circulation on the surface, and
favouring the return of suppressed discharges ; so changing
chronic morbid conditions for the better . Full doses of
course are required for such actions.
As regards orchitis , Dr. Desterne has criticised unfavourably
the published experience with Clematis ;* but such a case as
that recorded by Dr. Ransford in the twenty-fifth volume of
the British Journal of Homoeopathy seems exempt from his ob
jections, and bears out the credit of the remedy. On the other
hand , there seems no doubt of its efficacy in urethral stric
ture, Hirscht praises it in the spasmodic form , and Frank
lin ; in the inflaminatory variety ; I have myself seen it act
with rapid curative power in symptoms of commencing stric
ture supervening upon chronic gleet. The influence of
Clematis on the skin, moreover, is unquestionable. Hempel
gives one case and Hirsch another of chronic eczema impeti
ginoides cured by it. It seems a favourite medicine in the
Leopoldstadt Hospital at Vienna for enlargement of the lym
phatic glands; and Dr. Hirsch recommends it in “ chronic
inflammatory states of the borders of the eyelids, with sore
ness and swelling of the Meibomian glands, such as we find
in young scrofulous subjects.” Dr. Madden (and I can
corroborate him ) had no little confidence in Clematis in the
treatment of iritis.
All this evidence makes it probable that we have not yet
sounded to the depths the virtues of Clematis, or assigned it
its definite sphere of action . I know of no medicine pre
* See Hempel, sub voce.
+ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxv, 612.
* Science and Art of Surgery, i, 428.
298 COCA .

senting much analogy with it ; nor has its use been extensive
enough to enable us to fix its most suitable dose.

I have now to bring before you the Peruvian shrub known

as the Erythroxylon
Coca .
The leaves are the officinal portion ; a tincture may be made
from them when fresh, or triturations when dried .
Coca has been proved by twenty -four persons in all (mostly
homeopathists), besides the observations made by travellers
of its effects on the natives. A full collection of all this in
formation has been made by Dr. C. Hering, and published by
him in his Materia Medica .
Coca is one of those substances of which we shall soon
encounter a cardinal instance in coffee — substances which
“ cheer, but not inebriate , ” stimulating the nervous centres
without engorging their substance and disordering their
functions like alcohol, opium , and haschisch . It has been
used from time immemorial by the natives of South America
as we use tea and tobacco . Taken in excess, it causes mental
excitement, palpitation, sleeplessness, sparks before the eyes
and ringing in the ears, with increased susceptibility of the
senses.. It has in a marked degree the property belonging to
this class of substances of diminishing tissue-waste ; so that,
while under its influence, there is little need of food, the
bowels are costive, and the urine would probably be found
deficient in solid matter. By acting thus, and by diminishing
the sense of fatigue, it proves invaluable to the travellers in
its native regions, who chew the leaves as they go on. It
has a further virtue, common to it with Arsenic, of ob
viating the distress experienced in climbing heights, and
breathing
“ the difficult air of the keeu mountain -top . "
This power of the plant is witnessed to by all observers.
Coca has found little use as yet in practice. Dr. Hering
 COCCULUS INDICUS. 299

recommends its trial in troubles coming on with a low state of

the barometer ; and the analogy of Arsenic would suggest its
trial in asthma. Dr. Clotar Müller, who was one of the first
>

to prove and discuss Coca , says that he has found it useful to

palliate over-action in cardiac disease. It may occasionally
replace Coffea in insomnia from nervous excitement.
And now , of
Cocculus Indicus.
This is unknown as a medicine save in homeopathic prac
tice, where it is employed in the form of a tincture prepared
from the seeds.
Cocculus was proved by Hahnemann among his earliest
medicines ; a pathogenesis of it appears in the Fragmenta de
viribus, containing 156 symptoms from himself, and 6 from
three authors. In the first volume of the third edition of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre the number has swelled to 557 , of
which more than half are Hahnemann's, the remainder being
contributed by eight fellow -observers.
Hahnemann says in his preface that Cocculus had never
been employed as a remedial agent previously to the provings
instituted by him with it on the healthy. He commends it in
some lentescent nervous fevers ; in abdominal and other
spasms, with depression of spirits, especially in women ; and
in not a few paralytic affections and moral disturbances.
The experience of his disciples bas verified especially the
second of these recommendations, and has established it as a
true anti- paralytic ; while it has, with the aid of physiological
experimentation , both defined and extended its sphere of
action .
Cocculus is well known as a poison for fishes, and as an
agent used for the adulteration of beer . In both cases the
intoxication it produces is manifest rather in the motor than
in the ideational centres ; and to the same effect is the testi-
mony of those who have experienced its effects in their own
300 COCCULUS INDICUS .

persons. Hahnemann has related in Hufeland's Journal a

case of poisoning by it, which may be read in English in Dr.
Dudgeon's collection of his Lesser Writings (p. 377) . Cold
ness ; paralytic stiffness of the limbs, with drawing pains in
their bones and in the back ; and sullen irritability, with
anxiety, were the prominent symptoms. The patient said
that his brain felt as if constricted by a ligature. He wished
to sleep, but a frightful sensation, as of a hideous dream ,
came over him directly he closed his eyes, and made him
start up again. He had great repugnance to food and drink .
The experiments which have lately been made on animals
with the alkaloid contained in Cocculus, Picrotoxine, show
that convulsions, both tonic and clonic, are a special charac
teristic of its action. The latter present many of those
singular features which have been observed as results of
injury to the crura cerebri, as semi-circular and backward
movements, and rolling over on the axis of the body. With
these there is great slowness of pulse and respiration, indi
cating disturbance at the origin of the vagi.
Cocculus thus appears to influence the motor nervous tract
throughout the cranio -spinal axis. To such action is refer
able, I think, the whole range of its curative influence. It is
of great service in certain kinds of vomiting. These, when
analysed , appear to be of cerebral rather than gastric origin.
They are such as occur in sea - sickness, and in some
persons from riding in a carriage or any similar motion ; they
have another instance in the vomiting of migraine and of
.cerebral tumours . In the latter Cocculus yields to Apomor
phia, but in the former it has no rival. Such sickness is
usually accompanied with vertigo ; and for this trouble, when
thus associated or appearing independently, Cocculus is a
principal remedy. The abdominal spasms in which it is, as
Hahnemann says, so frequently serviceable are not mere
colic ; they appear always to spring from the nervous centres
either directly or by reflex irritation. They are generally
accompanied by flatulence, which is not the product of fer
 COCCULUS INDICUS . 301

mentation, but seemingly generated by the intestinal walls.

Such flatulent spasms are most frequently seen in the
female sex, and especially when its characteristic functions
are being performed , as during menstruation and pregnancy.
" Menstrual colic is an example ; and here Cocculus is.
renowned, though it has no power over pure dysmenor
rhwa. It is also useful in other nervous affections occurring
at these times, as in menstrual headache. The following case
of Dr. Black's shows what it can do here, and illustrates also
the nausea and vertigo characteristic of the drug :
66
“ Miss H- , æt. 35, of a full plethoric habit, has suffered
from her present headaches for now fifteen years ; they came
on shortly after the catamenia appeared , and have ever since
regularly occurred at that period. Violent headache - de
scribed as a dull pain affecting the whole head ; the patient
has a difficulty in describing it minutely ; is unable to lie for
a moment on the back of the head ; is forced to lie on the
side ; unable to bear the least light ; any noise excites nausea
and vomiting. During the headache she feels as if suffering
from sea -sickness, and on sitting up the objects around seem
to move up and down. The headache lasts from thirty -six to
forty-eight hours, and comes on on the third or fourth day of
the catamenial period. The catamenia are abundant, but un
attended by local pain. General health good .
“ March 16th. -Cocc. 18 , m . et n .
“ April 4th.-The headache has occurred at the usual time,
but not so severe as usual, for she was able to move about,
and was not confined to bed, as she always was before. A
dose of the 6th dilution was given from every half-hour to every
six hours during the third and fourth days of her period with
great advantage. Cont. Cocc.
“ 20th .- Rept. Cocc. 18, as on March 16th .
" May 1st. - Has had a very slight headache at the usual
period, which was again much relieved by frequently repeated
doses of Cocc . 18 ; she was now ordered Bell . 6, alternately
with Cocc. 18, m . et n . This was the last prescription ; for
302 COCCULUS INDICUS.

one headache occurring after that she took the Cocc. Since
October, 1844, to July, 1846, she has continued free from
these headaches .
“ Remarks.- The principal indication in this case for the
selection of Cocculus was the marked tendency to nausea
resembling sea -sickness, as if the stomach heaved up and
down. So great was this idiosyncrasy that she told me that
travelling in a carriage made her feel ill, and that sickness
has often been brought on by looking at a vessel pitching up .”
The use of Cocculus in convulsive and paralytic affections
is yet in its infancy. It is said to have removed hemiplegia
following apoplexy ; and Trinks has recorded an excellent
case of post -diphtheritic paralysis in which it was the cura
tive agent. It might prove useful (perhaps in the form of
Picrotoxine) in some of the rarer forms of chorea , in which
peculiar and definite involuntary movements like those it
produces - constitute the disorder. Dr. Phillips' recom
mendation of it in hysterical paralysis seems well in accord
ance with its general action .
A French physician, M. Felix Planat, has just published a
treatise entitled Récherches physiologiques et thérapeutiques sur
la Picrotoxine. He states that he has by the administration
of this alkaloid brought on convulsions, with foam at the
mouth, in a rabbit, a kitten , and other animals of lower
organization ; and that, giving it persistently in epilepsy in
the form of a strong tincture of Cocculus), on the principle
similia similibus curantur, he has obtained several undoubted
cures .
The French Academy has awarded this writer a prize
upon the Barbier foundation . *
The only medicine with which I can compare Cocculus is
Chamomilla .
Themedium dilutions (as in Dr. Black's case) have been those
mainly used, Hahnemann himself recommending the twelfth.
But Dr. Phillips says he gets excellent results in cerebral

* London Medical Record, May 26, 1875.

 COCCUS CACTI . 303

vomiting, flatulent distension and spasms, and menstrual

colic - for none of which uses , however, does he credit the
school in which he learnt them — with doses of one to three
drops of a strong tincture.
We have next to consider the place and action of Cochi-.
neal

Coccus cacti.

The dried insect, powdered, is treated with alcohol for a

tincture, or (better) triturated with milk -sugar.
Cochineal has been proved by the members of the Austrian
Society in their wonted exhaustive manner. The experiments
-inwhich twenty -three persons took part - are related in detail
in the fourth volume of the Esterreichische Zeitschrift ; and the
schema of the symptoms may be found translated in Met
calf's Homeopathic Provings. Hempel's article, also, should
be consulted .
The Austrian proving makes it evident that the virtues
popularly ascribed to Cochineal in whooping-cough spring
from its homeopathic relation to the disease. Few of the
provers escaped a cough ; and with Dr. Wurmb it was "so
violent that it caused vomiting, and the expectoration of a
great quantity of thick, viscous, and albuminous mucus." I
am not aware, however, that the medicine has been much used
by homeopathists against this disease. I myself gave it once,
in the first decimal trituration , in a case where a father whose
house was full of whooping -cough contracted just such a
cough as that Dr. Wurmb describes. The curative effect
was very marked. Again, this proving amply accounts for the
reputation of Cochineal in the school of Rademacher as a
“ kidney remedy.” The urinary symptoms are numerous,
and of a high grade of intensity. Nephritic colic and vesical
and urethral tenesmus are plainly pictured therein ; and you
may read in Hempel cases where affections of this kind and
304 COFFEA .

also acute renal dropsies have been cured by Cochineal. I

have little doubt but that the study of this beautiful proving
will lead to a more extensive use of the medicine, especially
in sore throat with great dryness (like Belladonna ), in inflam
mation of the labia ( like Apis), and in laryngeal irritation
and hoarseness .
Cochineal has hitherto proved curative only in tolerably
material doses .

We come now to one of those substances which stand on the

boundary line between food and medicine,
Coffea .
We use the raw , not the roasted bean, preparing it either
as a tincture or by trituration. Hahnemann's caution in
this respect is justified by the discovery that methylamine is
developed in coffee by roasting.
A full proving of Coffea — by five persons, one of whom was
Hahnemann - is recorded by Stapf in his Additions to the
Materia Medica ; and contains 246 symptoms.
a
Stapf well characterises the primary effect of Coffee as
pathological excitation of all the organic functions. When
Coffee acts moderately upon the healthy organism the irrita
bility of the organs of sense is morbidly increased, the visual
power becomes more acute, the hearing more sensitive, the
taste is finer, the sensorium is more vivid (hence increased
susceptibility to pain) , the mobility of the muscles is in
creased , the sexual desire is more excited, even the nervous
activity of the digestive and secretive organs is increased ;
hence a morbid sensation of excessive hunger, increased desire
and facility for alvine evacuations and for the emissions of
urine. To what an extent the nervous and animal activity of
the organism is increased by Coffee, appears from the sleep
lessness which it excites in various shades and degrees, from
the peculiar pathological excitation of the mind and soul, and
from the febrile warmth which it causes to a considerable
 COFFEA . 305

extent." This primary effect of Coffee is made use of in

many ways, as you well know ;-to arrest the paroxysm of
ague and of asthma, to relieve headache, and to antidote the
depressing effects of vegetable poisons, such as Opium. But
it also points to several conditions in which the drug may
become homeopathically curative, as when pain is felt exces
sively (in labour, for instance ), in nervous excitement, and
especially in sleeplessness. For this last it has a high repute
in the school of Hahnemann ; and my own experience with it
makes me surprised to find Dr. Ker saying that he has never
known it do any good .* Possibly he used it in too low
dilution . I find it particularly useful when the patient cannot
get to sleep because of some ideas perpetually forcing them
selves upon his mind. Dr. Bayes says that the insomnia
cured by Coffea is that which is owing to excessive agitation
of mind or body.
There are two forms of neuralgia in which Coffea has often
proved beneficial. One of these is toothache. We are
indebted to Dr. E. M. Hale for establishing as the character
istic for it here (besides restlessness and great complaining)
that the pain is entirely relieved for a time by holding cold
water in the mouth, returning as this grows warm.t He has
lately communicated a case in which strong Coffee drunk to
keep off sleep produced a toothache having this very feature. I
The other Coffea neuralgia is a variety of migraine, which the
excessive use of the beverage is so apt to occasion. Hahne
mann, who wrote an essay on the injurious effects of this
practice, so common in Germany in his time, thus describes
the migraine it causes : — “ It comes on in the morning shortly
after waking, and increases little by little. The pain becomes
intolerable, and sometimes burning ; the integuments of the
head are very sensitive, and hurt when touched ever so
slightly. Body and mind seem excessively sensitive. The
* Monthly Hom . Review , xviii, 744.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii , 492.
# Ibid., xxxii, 546 .
20
306 COFFEA .

patients look exhausted ; they retire to lonely and dark

places, and close their eyes in order to avoid the light of day ;
they remain seated in an arm -chair, or stretched upon a bed.
The least noise or motion excites the pain.. They avoid talk
ing or being talked to, or hearing others talk . The body is
colder than usual, although no chills are experienced ; the
hands and feet especially are very cold. They loathe all
food and drink, on account of a continual sickness at the
stomach . If the attack is very violent, a vomiting of mucus
takes place, which, however, does not diminish the headache.
There are no alvine discharges. The pain scarcely ever
ceases before evening. The attacks come on irregularly, and
without premonitory symptoms."
I have given this description, because of late the alkaloid of
Coffea — Caffeine - has come into use, generally by hypo
dermic injection, as a remedy for migraine. This Caffeine
contains the toxic principles of Coffee in a very concentrated
form . In doses of from two to ten grains, it causes (accord
ing to Lehmann ) violent excitement of the vascular and
nervous systems - palpitations of the heart, extraordinary
frequency, irregularity, and often intermission of the pulse,
oppression of the chest, pains in the head , confusion of the
senses, singing in the ears, scintillations before the eyes,
sleeplessness, erections, and delirium . These phenomena
seem to be the result of direct excitation of the heart and
nervous centres, which latter (in animals) goes on to tetanus.
The cardiac condition induced by it is described by Dr.
Phillips as one of irritability, in which the slightest excite
ment is sufficient to bring on violent palpitations.
This keener action of the alkaloid should be utilised in
practice according to the law of similars. That it can be we
have the testimony of Dr. Anstie . His experience led him to
hope that Caffeine might prove a very valuable remedy, both
in neuralgia and in alcoholic insomnia. And when a corre
spondent asked how an agent mainly employed for rousing
the nervous system (as in opium - poisoning) can be effectively
 COLCHICUM . 309

used as a calmer of pain and nervous irritation, his reply was

just that which ours would have been — that “the dosage is
wholly different in the two cases .”
I have only to add that Dr. Bayes describes the hemi
crania in which Coffea is useful as a kind of clavus ; and
mentions a case in which spasmodic stricture of the rectum
was remarkably controlled by the medicine.
Coffea admits of close and profitable comparison with
Chamomilla and Ignatia .
The dilutions from the third upwards have generally
been used. Dr. Bayes finds the twelfth most effectual.

Our next medicine is the meadow -saffron ,

Colchicum .

We prepare the tincture from the fresh common bulb, by

expressing the juice, and treating the residue with alcohol.
Several minor attempts at a pathogenesis of Colchicum
occur in homeopathic literature ; they may best be read in
Dr. Allen's Encyclopædia. But the drug has received a com
plete proving at the hands of Dr. Reil, the full record of
which should be consulted . It is translated from the Viertel
jahrschrift in the nineteenth volume of the British Journal
of Homeopathy. An excellent study of Colchicum by Dr.
Carroll Dunham is contained in the fifteenth volume of the
Monthly Homoeopathic Review .
In poisoning by Colchicum , the gastro -enteric symptoms
are very prominent. These are of specific nature, as they
appear with hardly less severity when the poison is directly
introduced into the circulation. They have two forms, or
perhaps stages. In the first, there are constant and profuse
serous evacuations, with collapse, blueness and coldness,
hoarse voice, and cramps — the whole forming a vivid picture
of Asiatic cholera . In the second the symptoms are those of
gastro-enteritis, with especial dysenteric phenomena. In
308 COLCHICUM .

both forms muscular weakness is very marked ; and there is

often deathly nausea .
Next to the stomach and intestines, Colchicum acts most
powerfully on the kidneys. It is supposed to be diuretic ;
but I apprehend that the notion has arisen from observation
of its action in disease. In a short proving of it which I
made some years ago upon my own person the quantity of
urine was very notably decreased ; and Stoerck found the same
thing.* Suppression often occurs in cases of poisoning. A
more important question concerns its influence upon the
elimination of the urinary solids. Some statements have
been made to the effect that it increases the proportion of
these, and especially of the urea and uric acid . Dr. Garrodt
has analysed these statements , and made some careful experi.
ments himself, with the conclusion that “ there is no evidence
that Colchicum produces any of its effects upon the system by
causing the kidneys to eliminate an increased quantity of uric
acid'; in fact, when the drug is continued for any lengthened
time, it appears to exert a contrary effect.” He also says ,
4
• We cannot assert that Colchicum has any influence upon
the excretion of urea , or the other solid ingredients of the
urine.”
A case of poisoning by Colchicum is reported in the London
Medical Gazette for 1838-9 in which the symptoms assumed
another character. There was intense gnawing, dragging pain
in all the joints of the extremities, beginning in the hands and
feet with numbness and pricking, with profuse acid sweating,
and stiffness and pain in the occiput and nape of the neck.
Such rheumatoid phenomena occurred in Stoerck's experiment
on himself, and are very marked in Dr. Reil's proving. Here,
however, they seemed seated in the muscles rather than the
joints ; and Teste's statement was borne out, that the neck is
specially influenced by the drug. Several provers had decidei
pleurodynia.
* Libellus de Rad. Colch . Autumn ., 1759.
† Nature and Treatment of Gout, 2nd ed ., 1863.
 COLCHICUM . 309

There are three other statements to be made about the

physiological action of Colchicum. The first is, that cows
which eat it become affected with distressing and sometimes
fatal tympanitic distension. The second, that it appears
directly to slow the heart's action . The third, that in one
case of poisoning by it the pleuræ were found inflamed .
We pass now to therapeutics. The gastro -enteric action of
Colchicum has hardly yet been utilised in homeopathic prac
tice. Its botanical congener, Veratrum album, has preoccupied
any place it might have found in the treatment of cholera . I
should suggest its substitution , however, in some cases, should
great nausea be present, and should the cramps attack espe
cially the soles of the feet. I once effected a rapid cure of an
obstinate acute diarrhea with Colchicum , guided to this medi
cine by the deathly nausea and prostration which were present.
It ought to find an occasional place in the treatment of dysen
tery, and might be useful in relieving tympanites, as indeed
2

in veterinary practice it has proved to be. Borborygmi are

very marked in its diarrbæa.
But the main interest of Colchicum lies in its relation to
gout and rheumatism . Its power of relieving the gouty
paroxysm was renowned of old ; and, since its revival in later
times, has become firmly established and universally recog
nised. It is confessedly, moreover , of a “ specific " nature . It
is not an indirect result of evacuations caused by the drug,
for it occurs just as surely when these are absent. It is not
an ordinary " anodyne ” effect, for Colchicum has no such
property . Nor does the medicine act as an " antiphlogistic,”
for it subdues the pain before the heat and swelling begin to
subside, and some time before the temperature falls. The
term “ specific " is accordingly used to denote its action ; and
pathogenesy shows that here, as elsewhere, “ specific ” means
homeopathic. The anti -arthritic power of Colchicum would
hardly, indeed , have been arrived at by the rule similia similibus;
but, being empirically discovered , no other formula seems so
well to express the relation of its curative to its physiological
310 COLCHICUM .

effects. So far as it influences healthy joints it is to cause

inflammation and pain in them , and not any condition oppo
site to that which obtains in the gouty state .
If this be the rationale of its influence, Colchicum acts
directly upon the affected joints in acute gout, and may have
no power over the morbid diathesis. Pereira writes— “ That
Colchicum alleviates a paroxysm of gout I have before men
tioned ; but that alleviation is palliative, not curative. It has
no tendency to prevent a speedy recurrence of the attack ;
nay, according to Sir Charles Scudamore, it renders the
disposition to the disease much stronger in the system .”
Ringer says that aa full dose may remove the pain in an hour,
but Wood adds that by such practice the mischief is often
transferred to the internal organs. It was supposed at one
time that it might be of permanent benefit by increasing the
elimination of uric acid by the kidneys ; but Dr. Garrod's
investigations have barred this claim . It must thus be con
cluded that, in the ordinary dosage, Colchicum acts locally
only upon gout ; and , like Quinine with ague, may by excess
of action suppress it injuriously. It is a question whether
homeopathy can make a better use of it. There must be
something in the physiological action of the drug which
makes it so effective specially against gouty pain and inflam
mation - something qualitative, as Dr. Drysdale expresses it,*
in its relation to the disease. Whether the suggestion of
Dr. Garrod's results is worth anything - whether Colchicum
diminishes the renal elimination of uric acid , and is thus
homeopathic and curative to gout at its possible fountain
head - remains to be investigated. However this may be, it
is certain that in the various gouty neuralgiæ and inflam
mations Colchicum is more effective than any other medicine.
Several of these affections — especially the pleurodynia, the
angina, and the ophthalmia - are figured pretty plainly in
pathogenesis ; and quite small doses are often sufficient to
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 313.
 COLCHICUM . 311

cure them. Dr. Dunham lays stress on the tendency of

Colchicum to make the returns of gout more asthenic ; and,
connecting this with the muscular weakness it causes, thinks
it most perfectly homeopathic when gout presents the
asthenic form in coming before us for treatment.
It makes for the purely local action of Colchicum in gout,
that rheumatism - so similar to it in its arthritis, but so
unlike it essentially - should be also under the control of the
medicine. But it further strengthens the doctrine of quali
tative relation , that rheumatic joints are not nearly so much
influenced by it as gouty . It is, as its provings indicate, in
muscular rheumatism - especially torticollis — that it shows
itself most effectual. But in two published cases -one of
Dr. Kidd's and one of Dr. Laurie's * —it displayed such re
markable power of controlling rheumatic pericarditis, that it
ought to be more frequently used in the treatment of this
affection . We have seen that it has inflamed the pleuræ .
Teste says that the rheumatic pains to which it corresponds
are generally tearing. In warm weather they are principally
felt at the surface of the body ; as the air grows cooler they
seem to penetrate the deeper tissues and the bones . Dr.
Dunham says that they are worse at night .
A statement of the last-named author's I must cite
without comment, for what it is worth. “ I would draw
attention, ” he writes, “to the fact that, in many cases of
poisoning by Colchicum, cataracts have formed before death
in the eyes of the sufferers. Professor Hoppe reports that
with it he greatly benefited, though he failed to cure , three
cases of soft cataract.”
This is all I have to say about the therapeutic power of
Colchicum. But I know of few drugs which seem to promise
more extensive applications in the future.
Actæa racemosa , Arnica, Bryonia , and Veratrum album seem
to be its closest analogues.

* Ibid ., v , 314, and xiii, 198.

312 COLLINSONIA CANADENSIS .

The question of dose is a large one. Five drops of the

mother -tincture every few hours seem to give speedy relief,
without baneful consequences, in ordinary gout; but Dr.
Dunham says that in the atonic forms to which he thinks it
specially suitable the fifteenth dilution is quite strong enough.
There seems nothing gained by diluting the drug for its
other applications.
Another valuable contribution to our Materia Medica
from the indigenous plants of the American continent is
the
Collinsonia Canadensis.
The tincture should be prepared from the root .
In Dr. Hale’s New Remedies may be found a short proving
of Collinsonia, together with all that is known about the
drug.
From this proving, and from the considerable clinical
experience now accumulated , we are able to define pretty
clearly the sphere of action of Collinsonia. It affects the
whole gastro -intestinal canal, but especially the rectum . The
presence of flatulence, spasm , and colic in the parts above
confirms the indications for the remedy drawn from the
condition of the rectum itself ; but these last alone are
decisive. From Dr. Burt's proving it appears that Collin
sonia in small doses causes constipation, with straining
and dull pain in the anus after stool. Here is shadowed
forth the most important action of the drug. It is in con
stipation and hæmorrhoids from congestive inertia of the lower
bowel that Collinsonia proves such a precious remedy. We
frequently meet with such a condition in the middle and
latter months of pregnancy ; and here I have the greatest
confidence in the drug. Nor, though acting primarily on the
rectum , does it confine its curative influence to that one only
of the pelvic viscera. In many uterine affections connected
with constipation it is of great value. Cases are collected by
 COLLINSONIA CANADENSIS . 313

Dr. Hale in which dysmenorrhea, pruritus, and even prolapsus

uteri have under such circumstances yielded to its use. One
of the cases of pruritus was a woman in the eighth month of
pregnancy : so that Collinsonia should be remembered when
we meet with that distressing form of the affection . In
larger doses, Collinsonia irritates the rectum so much as to
set up diarrhea, soon running on into dysentery : there are
severe colicky pains in the hypogastric region before and after
the stools, and much tenesmus. It has not been used to any
extent in complaints of this kind ; but in proctitis and rectal
dysentery it should rival Aloes .
The rectum is thus the main field of action of Collinsonia ;
but you will see from Dr. Hale’s article that it is gaining
considerable reputation as a cardiac remedy. Time will show
its real place and value here.
I have already hinted that Aloes is a close analogue of
Collinsonia . So also are Æsculus and Podophyllum , and
more remotely - Hydrastis, Nux vomica, and Sulphur.
I have nearly always used the 2nd dilution ; but others
seem to have done as well with the 3rd, and others with
more material doses . Herein also Collinsonia resembles .
Æsculus .
 LECTURE XVIII .

COLOCYNTH , CONIUM , COPAIBA , CORALLIUM , CROCUS ,

CROTON .

I begin to -day's lecture with

Colocynth ,
a drug which is a crucial instance of the fruitful results
attainable by the Hahnemannian process of " proving " on
the healthy body. Here is a substance which traditional
medicine knows simply as a purgative. The modern experi
mentation on animals has done nothing for it : as a purgative
and nothing else it still stands in the works of Ringer, Wood,
and even Phillips. But a few physicians in Vienna agreed to
test its effects on their own bodies ; and lo ! a range of action
is revealed which at once puts it in a high place among
specific remedies.
The dry pulp of the fruit is either triturated, or treated with
alcohol to make a tincture.
There is a pathogenesis of Colocynth in the sixth volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 26 symptoms from
Hahnemann himself, 195 from six fellow - observers, and 29
from authors. In the Chronic Diseases a second pathogenesis
appears, but has only swollen to 283 symptoms in all, the
additional ones being mainly Hahnemann's, i. e. observed on
patients. But our knowledge of the drug has been
immensely increased, and, indeed, pretty well perfected, by an
exhaustive proving conducted with it by the Austrian Society.
Dr. Watzke's account of the experiments - in which seventeen
 COLOCYNTH . 315

persons, including two women, took part — is translated from

the first volume of the Esterreichische Zeitschrift in Metcalf's
Homcopathic Provings. It contains also an analysis of
Hahnemann's pathogenesis, and a complete account of all
that is known of the drug, both as poison and as medicine.
This monograph is indispensable for the study of Colocynth ;
and so also is a commentary upon it by Mr. Pope, which you
will find in the twelfth volume of the Monthly Homoeopathic
Review .
Traditional medicine, as I have said, knows Colocynth only
as a purgative. It is aware , however, that this action is
specific, and not merely local, being induced by its external
application as well as by its introduction into the stomach.
It seems most probable that thus, at least, it purges the lower
bowel only, as the rectum is the only part of the alimentary
tract found inflamed when a poisonous dose is injected into a
vein . As under such circumstances there is no manifest
irritation of the stomach , the vomiting which has been
observed as a consequence of its external application would
appear to result from an influence upon the (gastric) nerves .
Still more certain evidence of such an influence is the severe
colic which always accompanies the purgative action of
Colocynth, and which is more marked with it than with any
other cathartic. The pain is generally about the umbilicus,
is of a twisting and burning character, increased by food, and
relieved by the accompanying diarrhæic evacuations. Tenes
mus also is a constant feature of the Colocynth diarrhea. In
one case of poisoning by it the intestines were glued together
by recent lymph, showing its power to inflame the peri
toneum .
The colic and diarrhea so characteristic of Colocynth were
esperienced by all the provers. But in most of them other
symptoms appeared , showing the power of the drug to act
upon the nervous trunks on the surface as vigorously as upon
the abdominal plexuses. The trigeminus is not uncommonly
affected, causing toothache and hemicrania . But the nerves
316 COLOCYNTH .

about the hip -joint suffer most severely, the pain darting
sometimes down the anterior crural and sometimes down the
sciatic trunks, even to the foot. The spermatic and ovarian
nerves are also affected — the only two provers of the female
sex complaining of deep stitches as from a needle in the
ovaries, and one of the male provers experiencing pain and
swelling of the testicle and spermatic cord.
The therapeutical virtues of Colocynth are a true reflection
of the pathogenetic powers now described as belonging to it .
It is occasionally but rarely indicated in dysentery. It is
homeopathic to this disease when the morbid process is
confined to the rectum , the evacuations consisting chiefly of
blood ; or when severe colic is present. So also it may now and
then be of service in peritonitis :* Dr. Ludlam recommends it
especially when that portion of the membrane which envelops
the ovaries is affected . In both these inflammations, how
ever, I prefer Mercurius corrosivus as a rule. The grand
sphere of Colocynth lies among the neuroses, especially where
pain is the most prominent feature. In Dr. Watzke's article
you will find collected a number of cases in which neuralgiæ
of the fifth nerve, of the solar and other abdominal plexuses,
and of the lumbar and femoral nerves, have been cured in a
brilliant manner by this medicine. It is in colic and sciatica
that its greatest triumphs have been achieved. I have myself
been disappointed with it in all but recent cases of the latter
disease, greatly preferring Arsenic and Rhus. But for colic I
rarely require any other remedy, save in those cases for which
Plumbum is the obvious simillimum . Dr. Bähr thinks it is
“ rheumatic colic " for which Colocynth is suitable, and
Plumbum for neuralgic. He describes aa similar condition in
the stomach, for which also he recommends this remedy.
Both “ are met with in the transition seasons when the air is
cold , but the sun is still powerful enough to heat the blood ;
they likewise occur in summer, in consequence of sudden
* Dr. Watzke's case , in vol. xxv of the Brit. Journ ., p. 561, looks like
commencing peritonitis nipped in the bud by Colocynth.
 CONIUM . 317

changes in the weather.” Dr. Carroll Dunbam * mentions a

case in which Colocynth, given because of the presence of its
characteristic symptoms in the abdomen and about the hip,
seemed to cause the permanent disappearance of an enlarged
ovary ; and Dr. Ludlam recommends it, under the same cir
cumstances, in ovarian neuralgia . In one of the provers it
removed neuralgic pain and swelling of the right testicle and
spermatic cord—the result, as he believes, of his previous
provings of Natrum muriaticum .
I would add what Mr. Pope says of the Colocynth neuralgia
in general. “ It appears to me to be that of the rheumatic
or gouty -rheumatic diathesis. The character of the pain, the
fact that the joints are all prominently affected , that in the
extremities motion so generally increases the suffering, that
aggravation of it is so readily induced by cold and damp, all
seem to indicate a dyscrasia of this nature. ” I may say in
corroboration of this that Colocynth has been found to remove
the violent pains in the eyeball which precede the full
development of arthritic ophthalmia.
The medicine which seems to me most closely allied to
Colocynth is Bryonia. It has some points of analogy, more
over, with Arsenicum , Chamomilla, Chelidonium , Cocculus,
Gamboge, and Nux vomica ; Mr. Pope says also with
Staphysagria .
It seems generally agreed that Colocynth must be somewhat
diluted to obtain good effects from it in neuralgia. Even
Dr. Kidd advises the third decimal here. But in colic he
speaks of getting from the mother-tincture the same results
for which Hahnemann recommends the 24th and 30th
dilutions .

We have next to study the action of hemlock,

Conium .
Our tincture is, and always has been, made from the ex
* Amer. Hom . Review, vi, 84.
318 CONIUM .

pressed juice of the whole plant. It is thus equivalent to

the “ succus ” of the British Pharmacopoeia, which Dr.
Harley has demonstrated to be the only really active prepara
tion of hemlock .
Conium is one of the medicines of the Reine Arzneimittellehre .
Its pathogenesis appears in the fourth volume, and con
tains 89 symptoms from Hahnemann, 131 from 3 fellow
observers, and 155 from 30 authors. A later pathogenesis in
the first edition of the Chronic Diseases adds observations by
two others and by Hahnemann himself, swelling the list to
700 : and in the second edition Hahnemann supplies 212
:

more, which must have been observed upon sick persons while
taking the 30th dilution. These new symptoms I have as
usual to discard ; and I must do the same with nearly all
those cited by Hahnemann from authors. They are, with
hardly an exception, observations on patients taking Conium
for cancer and other serious diseases : they profess to result
from preparations and doses of the drug which later investi.
gation has shown to be inert ; and they are but seldom put
forth by the writers themselves as medicinal effects. It is
Hahnemann who, unable to credit Stoerck's statement of the
innocuousness of this renowned poison, chooses to set down to
its action all phenomena appearing in the patients while
taking it. Symptoms most obviously the result of the disease,
or of an occasional cause — the cough of pulmonary cancer, the
enteritis and death of a severe chill, the serous apoplexy of
an octogenarian - are all set down as pathogenetic effects of
Conium . Dr. Harley has now shown that Stoerck was quite
right, and that hemlock as he gave it is incapable of pro
ducing its physiological effects. Until, then, the cited sym
ptoms of Hahnemann's list have been revised, you will do well
to refrain from drawing upon them for instances of the action
of our drug upon the healthy.
There has been so much confusion between Conium and the
other Umbelliferæ , and the extracts in which it has been given
have been such bad preparations, that - save Hahnemann's
 CONIUM . 319

earlier provings with the juice - nothing was certainly known

of the real action of Conium till some thirty years ago. One
description of poisoning by it, however, stood on immortal
record . I make no apology for gracing this lecture with the
passage from the Phedo of Plato which contains it.
“ Socrates, having walked about, when he said that his legs .
were growing heavy , lay down on his back ; for the man so
directed him . And at the same time he who gave him the
poison, taking hold of him , after a short interval examined
his feet and legs ; and then having pressed his foot hard, he
asked if he felt. He said that he did not. After this
he pressed his thighs ; and thus going higher, he showed us
that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched
himself, and said that when the poison reached his heart he
should then depart. But now the parts around the lower
belly were almost cold ; when , uncovering himself, for he had
been covered over, he said (and they were his last words)
6
' Crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius ; pay it therefore, and 6
do not neglect it . “ It shall be done,' said Crito, but con
sider whether you have anything else to say . ' To this ques
tion he gave no reply ; but shortly after he gave a convulsive
movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed ;
>

and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.”

If we needed any further demonstration that the kurecov
which which the Athenians poisoned their criminals was our
Conium maculatum , we should have it in the elaborate argu
ment-philological, botanical, and physiological—which Dr.
Imbert -Gourbeyre has just given us in the pages of the Art
Médical. * But evidence of convincing force was afforded by
the case of poisoning recorded by Dr. Hughes Bennett in his
Clinical Lectures, which revived the interest in Conium in
recent times. The identity of the phenomena he described
with those recorded by Plato was obvious : both were speaking
of a poison which caused paralysis from below upwards,
Transl. in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxiii.
-320 CONIUM .

killing at last by gradual asphyxia. Dr. Christison began at

once to experiment with it on animals, and got the same
results. “In various experiments,” he writes, “ with a very
strong extract prepared from the green seeds with absolute
alcohol, the only effects I could remark were palsy, first of the
voluntary muscles, next of the chest, lastly of the diaphragm ,
-asphyxia, in short, from paralysis, without insensibility, and
with slight occasional twitches only of the limbs." Similar
conclusions have been reached by more recent experimenters,
who have mostly used the alkaloid of hemlock , Conia. But
the most satisfactory observations with the drug are those of
Dr. John Harley, who has followed (though without acknow
ledgment) the Hahnemannian method of proving on the human
subject. It appears from the facts recorded in his Old Vege
table Neurotics that the main and only action of full doses of
hemlock is upon the motor centres, which are — as it were
put to sleep. If the experimenter continues to use his legs
the effect will most probably be earlier felt in these parts,
after the manner seen in Socrates. If he remain in a state of
comparative rest, the effects will be first declared in the eyes.
There is here enfeebled power of accommodation of vision, with
giddiness accompanying every fresh adjustment of focus ;
then ptosis, subjective or objective ; from fuiler doses, a dull
lazy or fixed expressionless stare , and some dilatation of the
pupils ; more rarely diplopia. These phenomena imply para
lysis of the third, fourth, and sixth cranial nerves . They
come on , together with those of the legs, within an hour after
the ingestion of the dose, and sometimes pretty suddenly : in
another three hours they are gone. Consciousness is un
affected , and sensation slightly and rarely. No other effect on
the system was observed.
It is a moot question whether Conium produces these
results by affecting the intra -cranial motor centres, or by
directly paralysing the peripheral extremities of the nerves .
All agree that the cord is not involved, as it is only by
poisonous doses that reflex function is affected . But on the
 CONIUM . 321

former question Dr. Harley is on one side, and the Conti

nental experimenters on the other. It is probably a matter
of physiological interest only, so far as homeopathic appli
cations of the facts are concerned . For, even were its action
primarily central, there is no paralysis originating in the brain
or cord which is merely functional, as that of Conium from its
brevity must be. The only paralysis to which the law of
similars would lead us is that which supervenes upon diph
theria. Given antipathically, and in doses large enough to
produce its physiological effects, it is found useful by Dr.
Harley in many forms of motor irritability, as chorea, paraly
sis agitans, infantile convulsions, and local spasms and cramps ;
but the observations of others have hardly confirmed his
results.
So far of the neurotic action of hemlock, which is all that
is recognised by modern medicine. But we are now con
fronted with the fact that the plant was re-introduced into
practice by Störck as a remedy for various profound derange
ments of the vegetative life, and that in this capacity it con
tinues in high favour in the school of Hahnemann . It is the
fashion nowadays to reject all experience gained before the
rigid experimentation of later times set in ; but it is a very
unwise fashion . Trousseau and Pidoux set a much better
example ; and profess to have verified to some extent the
statements of Störck and his imitators . Such experiments as
those of Harley, valuable as they are in themselves, prove no
negative. They say nothing as to what the long-continued
use of small doses of the drug might do, either pathogeneti
cally or curatively. Hahnemann was led, from his provings
of this kind, to conclude that Conium tended to engorge the
glands, and recommended it in practice for such engorge
ments, especially when the result of mechanical injury. The
experience of the old physicians went to prove it useful also
when cancer or scrofula attacked these organs ; and this too
has been taken up in the school of Hahnemann. Again ,
that wasting of the mamma and testicles has not uncom
21
322 CONIUM .

monly occurred (according to the same authorities) from its

use suggests the glands of the reproductive system as
especially under its influence, and warrants its use in ovarian
affections also. Thus, in one way and another, an extensive
homeopathic employment of Conium has grown up, as you
may see from reading Noack and Trinks' recommendations
of it, or the catalogue of its curative applications given by
Dr. Carroll Dunham in an article upon it in the fourteenth
volume of the Monthly Homoeopathic Review . I may sum it
up in the following propositions :
1. Conium is especially useful to old people, and among
these to women still more than to men .
2. It is useful in hypochondriasis, especially when con
nected with enforced abstinence from sexual intercourse.
3. It is remedial to an extent yet undefined in scirrhus,
especially that of the breast, but also where the affection can
be reached locally, as in cancer of the lip and stomach .
4. It is a genuine anti- scrofulous medicine, reducing swol
len glands, and especially removing the photophobia of
strumous ophthalmia.
5. It is very beneficial in indurations of glands or other
soft parts caused by injuries; including in this category
traumatic cataract.
6. It has a specific action on the female breast, dissipating
its engorgements and tumours, and relieving its pains.
7. It has hardly less influence on the ovaries, and on their
homologues, the male testes. It is often beneficial in scanty
menstruation and unready conception in the one sex, and in
deficient virility in the other, resulting from passive engorge
ments of these organs.
8. It is of great value in a certain form of cough. Dr.
Hirschel describes this as “ periodical, dry, excited by itching,
grating, tickling in the throat and behind the sternum ; it
comes in short bouts, and is especially evoked by lying down,
talking, and laughing."
These are the main uses of Conium among us ; but every
 COPAIBA . 323

man's published experience adds to it. I may refer you to

that of Dr. Bayes, who has much faith in it in hepatic and
uterine derangements, with acrid secretions ; and to that of
Teste, who thinks it a prime remedy in all chronic inflamma
tions of parenchymatous organs. This is a field which needs
careful survey and fresh work. I believe that if the original
experiments of Hahnemann and his disciples were disengaged
from their questionable surroundings, and the outline filled
in by some patient proving on the healthy carried on for a
length of time, we might have a valuable pathogenesis for
future applications.
In its action on the motor nervous system Conium resembles,
phenomenally at least, Curare, Kali bromidum , and especially
Gelseminum :: in the vegetative sphere its analogues are Iodine,
Hydrastis, and Baryta .
The homeopathic uses of which I have spoken have been
obtained mainly with the medium and higher dilutions.

The medicine next on our list is

Copaiba.
Our tincture is a solution of this oleo-resin in absolute
alcohol.
A short pathogenesis of Copaiba appeared in the Fragmenta
de viribus, containing 12 symptoms from Hahnemann and
8 from authors. He did not again take up the medicine ; and
the pathogenesis in Jahr's Manual consists of these symptoms
and others collected by Noack and Trinks as results of exces
sive medicinal doses. Teste gives us a proving made on him
self and seven or eight others, but only with the sixth
dilution .
The interest of Copaiba centres in its action on the urinary
mucous membrane. It is generally acknowledged that it acts
here as an irritant — the influence being strongest in the
urethra, and becoming weaker as it ascends towards the
324 COPAIBA .

kidney . Even on the latter, however, it acts as sometimes a

potent diuretic, sometimes a provocant of hæmaturiaor ischuria.
But the urethral influence is most marked . Sometimes the
irritation travels along the seminal tracts, and the testicle
swells and is tender. Even rheumatism , according to Pereira,
has been ascribed to the use of the balsam . But without build .
ing upon this last statement, enough bas been said to show the
perfect homeopathicity of Copaiba to gonorrhæa, in the treat
ment of which disease it has so high a reputation. This it
enjoys in the homeopathic school also, as you may see by
reading Dr. Yeldham's excellent treatise on Venereal Diseases.
He professes to agree with Ricord that its local effect is
indispensable for cure to be wrought by it ; but departs from
this position in recommending it also in the gonorrhea of
women , for which and for some forms of leucorrhæa it is of
undoubted value . The truth is that Copaiba affects more or
less all the mucous membranes, as well as their external con
tinuation, the skin . An eruption — now measle - like, now
urticarioid, now erythematous - often accompanies the action
of the drug ; and not only is the digestive tube disordered,
which might be from local action, but also the respiratory
passages . Ricord has found it produce “ irritation in the
larynx and the bronchi ; dryness also in the larynx, huskiness
in the chest, and dry and painful cough, in connection with
which there is expectoration of a semi-purulent, greenish, and
nauseously smelling mucus ” ( Phillips).
Thus the ancient repute of the drug - as well sketched by
Teste - in bronchial affections is substantiated and explained.
But, after all, it is as a remedy for urinary catarrhs that it
must be chiefly used. I have found it specially valuable in
irritation of the urethra and neck of the bladder occurring in
old women . The cutaneous action of the drug has hardly
been utilised ; but Dr. Guérin-Méneville mentions that on one
occasion, when giving it to a lady in the sixth dilution for
some urinary troubles, it caused the disappearance of an
acne which had long and obstinately disfigured her face.
 CORALLIUM RUBRUM . 325

Cannabis sativa , Cantharis, and Terebinthina are the nearest

analogues to Copaiba.
There seems nothing gained by raising the drug above the
first dilution ; and in gonorrhea Dr. Yeldham recommends
from ten to twenty drops of the 1st decimal for aa dose.

I have but a few words to say of the next name on my list,

Corallium rubrum .
It is prepared by trituration.
There is a short pathogenesis of coral taken from the
Archiv, in Jahr's Manual ; but our only real knowledge about
it is derived from Teste. “ In the provings,” he writes,
" which I made with this drug on my own person, some years
ago , I elicited a few exceedingly characteristic symptoms,
which induced me to prescribe it sometimes with striking
success, for nervous cough, asthma Millari, and endemic
whooping cough." In his Treatise on Diseases of Children ,
M. Teste places Corallium first among the remedies for
laryngismus stridulus and the spasmodic stage of pertussis ,
and says that a patient to whom he had given the medicine
for a chronic convulsive cough, said to him, “ It is like water
thrown upon fire. ” I have myself once or twice given
Corallium in whooping -cough with very satisfactory results.
On February 1st, 1867, I was asked to see the daughter of the
Rev. S. E- In the previous November she had had a very
troublesome cough, which resisted all the treatment (allo
pathic) directed against it. Change of air was at last pre
scribed ; and immediately on arriving at Norwood the cough
ceased . She returned home at Christmas time ; but the
cough gradually reappeared , and had now assumed its former
intensity. I found her firing minute guns of short barking
cough. This, I was told , went on all day; and for half-an
hour or so towards evening increased to a violent spasmodic
paroxysm. In other respects the health was fair. She was
326 CROCUS SATIVUS .

nearly 13, and had not yet menstruated . The larynx and
trachea were not tender, and the cough gave no pain. I
ascertained on inquiry that she was of nervous temperament,
and had more than once manifested hysterical symptoms. I
gave her a drop of Corallium 30 three times a day. On the
5th I saw the patient again. The cough had steadily
diminished since beginning the medicine. There had been
no paroxysm for two evenings, and I heard not a single bark
during my visit. By the 9th the cough had quite disap
peared ; and it did not return . Since this time Corallium has
become quite a favourite medicine with me for hysterical and
other spasmodic coughs ; and I am rarely disappointed
by it.
We have analogous medicines in Nitric acid, Atropia,
Drosera, Hyoscyamus, and Nux vomica .
For dose M. Teste recommends for children the 30th
potency, which led me to choose it in the case recorded
above. I have since found the 12th to answer every purpose.

I come now to a medicine which homeopathy has revived

out of long neglect and disuse , the saffron ,

Crocus sativus.

We prepare by percolation a tincture from the saffron of

commerce .
There is a very fair proving of Crocus in Stapf's Additions.
It was conducted on several persons, and with the mother
tincture. The articles in Hempel and Teste also should be
consulted .
The ancient reputation of Crocus as an emmenagogue,
though ignored by modern therapeutists, has been confirmed
by our provings. We of course use the drug medicinally for
precisely the opposite purpose , viz., to restrain menorrhagia.
It is specially recommended where the menstrual blood is
blackish and clotted, or (Dr. Guernsey says) of pitchy con
 CROTON TIGLIUM . 327

sistence. I have cured with Crocus many a case of menor

rhagia so characterised, giving this drug during the period ,
and China at the intervals . In this affection the coexistence
of a feeling as if something alive were moving about in the
abdomen is said to be a special indication for Crocus. Its
relation to such a symptom , which appears also in its patho
genesis, would make it suitable in cases of imaginary preg
nancy, for which indeed Teste recommends it. Crocus has
some power of affecting the brain, causing determination of
blood thereto, with epistaxis ; and exciting in some persons
immoderate fits of laughter. It might be useful in hysteria
or even in recent insanity in which this symptom was promi
nent. I am myself most struck , in reading the pathogenesis
of Crocus, with the eye -symptoms. It ought to be very
useful in that form of weak vision in which the patient feels
as if there were a gauze before the eyes, and tries to wink or
wipe it away .
The analogues of Crocus are Belladonna , Platina , Sabina,
and (most complete of all) Ruta.
I have always given the 2nd dilution : and should prefer
:

descending to ascending the scale.

Alphabetically, my next medicine would be the poison of

the rattle -snake, Crotalus. But I think it more convenient to
discuss this under the head of the serpent-poisons in general,
which I propose to do when I come to the chief of them,
Lachesis. I will conclude the present lecture by giving you
some account of the homeopathic uses of
Croton tiglium .
The expressed oil may be triturated with milk -sugar, or
dissolved in alcohol: but the officinal preparation is a tinc
ture of the seeds.
There is a short pathogenesis of Croton, taken from several
sources, in Jahr's Manual. Its physiological effects are better
328 CROTON TIGLIUM .

studied , however, in the articles upon it in Pereira, Hempel,

and Teste.
Croton is another of those drugs whose use well illustrates
the difference between Old Medicine and Homeopathy. It is
found to have drastic and rubefacient properties. Hence,
says Old Medicine, we will use it to purge and to counter
irritate whenever we think such processes likely to be bene
ficial. Nay, replies Homeopathy : Croton will rather be a
remedy for certain forms of diarrhea and of cutaneous in
flammation, resembling those which it causes. And this we
have indeed found it to be .
The purgation produced by Croton seems not the result of
inflammatory irritation, but rather of such a transudation of
the watery part of the blood as is caused by Elaterium and
Veratrum album, and obtains in Asiatic cholera. The accom
panying symptoms in severe cases, indeed, are strikingly
choleraic in character : and Croton might fairly take rank
:

among the remedies for choleraic diarrhoea . Dr. Guernsey

considers a sudden and forcible expulsion of the stool a
leading indication for its choice. It has not, however, been
so much used in this sphere as in that of cutaneous disease.
Teste was the first to call attention to the specific nature of its
action on the skin , * and to recommend it as a cutaneous
remedy. Later, Dr. Bähr bas followed in the sametrack : you
will find his observations translated in the sixteenth volume
of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. It is agreed that
eczema is the special form of exanthem developed by Croton :
and that the face and the external genitals are its favourite
habitats. It is precisely in such eczematous rashes that both
Teste and Bähr have found it , curative ; and I can add my
mite of confirmation to their statements. The rapid and
permanent manner in which Croton often relieves the itching
* “ Dr. Tilbury Fox states that Croton oil sometimes produces a sym
metrical erythema of the face, lasting for aa few days, where no direct
application of the drug could have occurred ” ( Ringer, p. 281 ) .
 CROTON TIGLIUM . 329

attendant upon eczema is one of the prettiest things in medi

cine.
Dr. Guernsey says that Croton will remove the pain shoot
ing through from the nipple to the shoulder of which nursing
women sometimes complain .
The analogues of Croton as a drastic are Elaterium , Vera
trum, and Colchicum ; as a cutaneous irritant it ranks with
Rhus, Apis, and Anacardium .
The dilutions from the 3rd decimal to the 6th centesimal
have been successfully used .
 LECTURE XIX .

CUPRUM, CURARE , CYCLAMEN , DIGITALIS .

Our medicines to -day will be Cuprum , Curare, Cyclamen,

and Digitalis.

By
Cuprum
I mean the salts of Copper in general as well as the pure
metal, for there seems no difference in their action ; and they
were used indiscriminately by Hahnemann in his provings and
citations from authors.
i
A short pathogenesis of Cuprum , in the form of the sulphate, 1

appeared in the Fragmenta de viribus. The acetate was then

proved by Hahnemann and four others, and the results pub
lished in Stapf's Archiv . These and the foregoing finally
appeared in the second volume of the Chronic Diseases, with
additional symptoms from Hahnemann himself, obtained
doubtless from patients with the thirtieth potency of the
triturated metal . If these last could be separated from the
rest, we should have a very fair pathogenesis of Cuprum ; the
more so, as 154 of the 387 symptoms are from authors, and
nearly all are observations of poisoning with the various salts.
A collection of cases of poisoning has been recently given us
by Dr. Berridge in the appendix to the British Journal of
Homoeopathy ; and these, with the symptoms of the Chronic
Diseases and a few others, have been arranged by Dr. Hering
in his Materia Medica . Besides this you may with advantage
consult the study of Cuprum by Dr. Heinigke, which has been
 CUPRUM . 331

translated from the Internationale homöopatische Presse, in the

thirtieth volume of the British Journal.
The poisonous action of Copper, like that of most metals, is
exerted primarily upon the alimentary canal, and secondarily,
after absorption, upon the nervous centres. In these two
spheres of action I propose to consider it.
I. The gastro -enteric symptoms induced by Copper are
those of acute inflammation, with severe colic and tympanites.
That they are specific, and not local only , would appear from the
sixth case of Dr. Berridge's collection, where they occurred in a
lady who was in the habit of using injections from a brass
syringe which proved to be coated internally with verdigris.
They also appear in workers with copper. Their abdominal
trouble is described by M. Blandet as “ aa form of enteritis of
which the chief symptom is a colic, with remissions. The
workman bends himself double to relieve it ; the belly is
tender on pressure ; there is headache and inclination to vomit ;
diarrhea or constipation ; the vomit consists of bilious fluid ;
fever is present, and frequently lassitude." * The copper
colic is thus different from that of lead, which is non -inflam
matory.
Little or no use has been made of these effects of the metal
in the school of Hahnemann ; for the employment of the drug
in cholera rests upon other grounds. We must go to allo
pathic practice to find an instance of the homeopathic use of
Cuprum here ; and it at once meets us in the case of chronic
diarrhæa with or without ulceration, for which the sulphate
is in high repute. Dr. Wood speaks of its action as “ stimu
lant and astringent ; ” but in the face of toxicology this seems
& mere evasion of the obvious inference from the facts.
II. The neurotic influence of Copper is very decided. The
effects," writes Pereira , " produced by the long -continued use of
small doses of the preparations of Copper are said to be various
affections of the nervous system , such as cramps and paralysis."
* See Berridge, Obs. 37.
332 CUPRUM .

Then he writes— “ If the cupreous preparations be used in

very small doses, they sometimes give relief in certain diseases,
principally of the nervous system , without obviously dis
ordering the functions ; in other words, in these instances the
only apparent effect is the modification observed in the morbid
condition .” This is pretty good homoeopathy, as far as it
goes ; but we must individualise rather more closely.
1. The cramps mentioned by Pereira are especially charac
teristic of the action of Cuprum . We have seen an instance
of them in its colic ; and you have only to read a few cases of
poisoning by it to observe how readily they are induced else.
where under its influence. They may be local or general,
clonic or tonic ; they may be a simple trembling, or may go
on to violent convulsions . Sometimes they occur in the air.
tubes, as observed by Dr. Maissonneuve,*非 causing very intense
dyspnea with laryngeal and bronchial spasm .
Hence has arisen the first great homeopathic use of
Cuprum , viz . to relieve cramp or spasm , and check convul.
sions. Its applications of this kind are very numerous. In
spasmodic affections of the respiratory organs it takes a high
place. In prolonged laryngismus it may be given with great
relief ;t though it is doubtful whether it can check the recur
rence of the complaint in children, where deeper causes are
usually at work . In whooping -cough it has been much
praised by Drs. Neidhard I and Drummond ; § and Bähr says
that by giving it as soon as the spasmodic stage sets in he
has succeeded so well that he has scarcely ever been obliged
to resort to any other treatment. In pure nervous asthma
Dr. Russell says that there is no medicine on which we may
rely more confidently to relieve the paroxysms: he says
nothing, however, about checking their recurrence. Passing
now to the heart, we find Dr. Bayes commending it highly in
angina pectoris, and ascribing the suggestion to Dr. Holland.
* See Berridge, Obs. 96. + See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 675
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xii, 437. § Ibid ., xxxi , 411.
|| Clinical Lectures.
 CUPRUM . 333

The experience of these practical physicians should be borne

in mind ; I have more than once followed its guidance with
advantage. Then we have the use of Copper, common to both
schools, in chorea and epilepsy. It is difficult to assign it its
exact place in the treatment of either affection ; but in epi
lepsy Dr. Bayes suggests that it is indicated by extreme
violence of the convulsions. He thinks it one of our best
medicines in this disease, and cites several cases in point.
Many others are given by Dr. Baertl, in a collection of cures
of epilepsy which is translated in the twenty-second volume
of the British Journal of Homeopathy.
It is, lastly, that feature in Asiatic cholera which has given
it the name “spasmodic,” which also gives Cuprum a place
among its remedies. The alvine evacuations of cholera are
altogether different from those produced by Copper ; yet the
true correspondence of disease and drug was perceived by
Hahnemann, and his discernment has been thoroughly war
ranted subsequently. In his original directions for the treat
ment of cholera * he put forth Cuprum as the specific remedy
60
for the second stage of clonic spasmodic character " if -- as
too often happened—Camphor failed to relieve. He stated
that it was to be preferred even to Veratrum here ; and recom
mended it also as a prophylactic. There is now abundant
evidence of its efficacy in this last capacity, both among the
workers in the metal and in those who have worn a plate of
it next the body during the prevalence of the epidemic. Drs.
Russell and Drysdale both had occasion to speak well of it in
the epidemic of 1849 in this country ,—the former com
-

mending it for the cramps, the latter also for the vomiting.
In 1866 Mr. Proctor, who treated a number of fully developed
cases with great success (he lost 14 only out of 98) , writest
- “ For the cramps it was unquestionably the best remedy, and
I may say for the vomiting also. In the stage of collapse I
gradually found myself trusting mainly to Cuprum , and the
* Lesser Writings, p. 847.
+ Brit. Journ. , xxv, 94.
334 CUPRUM .

impression is very strong on my mind that in collapse it is the

most reliable of our remedies. It appears to go deeper into
the organism and to fasten upon the disease with a firmer and
more tenacious grip. Certainly it accomplishes much by
keeping the stomach quiet, and thus enabling us to introduce
and retain what other medicine, or stimulant, or nourishment,
we may desire . ”
2. The paralysis of Cuprum resembles that of Plumbum
more closely than does its colic. It is one affecting the hands
alone, or at most the arms. Here is a description of it in a
copper -worker : - “ Right forearm in constant pronation, hand
bent at right angle to arm, thumbs drawn into palm , fingers
flexed ; motion of elbow remains good, but in the hand, and
especially in the joints of the fingers, extension is impossible,
and flexion only partial; upper extremities much emaciated,
right more than the left ; right hand nothing but skin and
bone.” I have no knowledge of any present application of
such facts .
3. A more important part of the neurotic action of Cuprum
is its powerful influence upon the brain. Almost every form
of cerebral disorder has been induced by its poisonous action ;
at the same time autopsy shows no sign of organic mischief.
The inferences deducible herefrom were well drawn out and set
forth by Dr. George Schmid, of Vienna : you will find his paper
on the subject translated in the first volume of the British
Journal of Homoeopathy. He was led especially to recommend
the use of Copper--in the form of the acetate - in the cerebral
symptoms which result from the retrocession of any of the
acute exanthemata, or from difficult dentition in children,
when the condition is scarcely active enough to require Bella
donna.. These suggestions have been confirmed by the expe
rience of most homeopathists ; and the use of Cuprum in
such conditions may be considered established . Its last
illustrator is Dr. Drummond , of Manchester, who in a paper
published in the thirty - first volume of the British Journal
relates cases of retrocession of eczema, y easles, and scarlatina
 CUPRUM . 335

in which Cuprum aceticum was employed with most grati

fying results. He speaks, also, of great benefit from its use
in cerebro -spinal meningitis ; and in some recent experiments
on animals related in the thirty -second volume of the same
journal great hyperæmia of the meninges of brain and spine
were noted .
1 The experiments just mentioned were made in view of an
extensive proving of Copper and its salts, just set on foot by the
Central Homeopathic Society of Germany, which promises
greatly to enlarge our knowledge of the action of the drug. In
two rabbits to whom the drug was administered by subcuta
neous injection the urine became scanty and albuminous, and
the kidneys were found after death with their tubes full of shed
and degenerated epithelium . The left ventricle of the heart
was much hypertrophied and the liver granular. This is very
suggestive, and connects Cuprum with Arsenic . Further
indications for its use may be derived from the experience
of the school of Rademacher, with whom it is one of the great
systemic remedies. Dr. Heinigke states that Rademacher
considered it indicated when there was premature exhaustion
of strength in illness ; and that it rapidly showed when it was
doing good by the sense of being better which the patient
experienced. Another sign of the same meaning was that
the urine became clearer and more plentiful when it was
otherwise. A long series of cases of diseases benefited by it,
related by Dr. Kissel, a prominent member of the school,
appears in the eighteenth volume of the British Journal. I
should add that the jaundice which so often appears in
copper-poisoning has not yet been accounted for or utilised in
practice.
The chief analogues of Cuprum are its fellow -metals,
Arsenicum and Plumbum . It has points of resemblance ,
moreover, to Nux vomica and Secale.
The higher potencies of metallic Copper, the lowest of the
acetate, have been most frequently given with success.
836 CURARE .

My next medicine is one of almost purely physiological

interest to you , but which homeopathy has lately begun to
employ in practice. It is the Indian arrow - poison, variously
called wourali, woorara, or (as we have it)

Curare .

It is prepared for our use by solution in alcohol .

Our knowledge of the poisonous action of Curare is well
put together by Dr. Carfrae in the fourth volume of the
Annals. Cases illustrating its curative power have been given
us by Mr. Freeman in the ninth volume of the Monthly
Homoeopathic Review.
The poisonous effects of Curare are very well ascertained.
It seems to act purely and simply upon the motor portion
of the nervous system , paralysing it, and doing so
from the periphery towards the centre. It has very
naturally been tried in tetanus : but without success. We
on the other hand have as naturally endeavoured to put
it to use in the treatment of paralysis. Mr. Freeman's
observations are the only records of its use which we have
5—1. Paralysis of the
at present. He specifies his cases as-1
parts supplied by all the motor cranial nerves, pains being
absent. 2. Lateral paralysis after apoplexy. 3. Paralysis
from mechanical injury. 4. The class of cases known as
nervous debility . 5. The debility of aged persons.. 6.
Debility after exhausting illness. Of the two cases cited
under the first heading, one is briefly described as “ general
motor paralysis,” and the action of the drug is dubious.
The other seems an instance of temporary loss of motor power
from repeated attacks of " apoplectiform congestion,” which,
according to Trousseau, is epilepsy. There was double facial
and right lateral paralysis ; swallowing and articulation also
were affected . Curare immediately restored the power of
swallowing : and the other symptoms steadily subsided,
whether post or propter hoc I cannot say . The cases of the
 CYCLAMEN EUROPÆUM . 337

second and third sections do not impress me with the power of

the drug. Far more satisfactory is its action in the semi
paralysis called nervous debility, and in that which results
from over -suckling or from exhausting illnesses. On the whole ,
it is in these last -named conditions that we may expect most
benefit from Curare.
I would add that Claude Bernard states that Curare
paralyses the vaso-motor as well as the musculo -motor
nerves.
The fact may bear fruit one day in our thera
peutics.
The dilutions from 3 to 12 were used in Mr. Freeman's
cases .

The next medicine on my list is the common sowbread,

Cyclamen Europæum .
The tincture is prepared from the fresh root.
The original proving is in the fifth volume of the Reine
Arzneimittellehre, where there are 5 symptoms from Hahne
mann himself, and 197 from four fellow - observers. There
is an additional proving by the Vienna physicians in their
journal: and some remarks and cases illustrative of its
therapeutic virtues, by Dr. Eidherr, may be read in the tenth
volume of the North American Journal of Homeopathy.
The only constant and remarkable actions of Cyclamen
are upon the head and eyes, and upon the female sexual
!
organs. Headache with dizziness, and obscuration of sight,
are the symptoms of the former parts. When these have
been present in cases of chlorosis from checked menstrua
tion, Cyclamen has proved in Dr. Eidherr's hands a most
valuable remedy, restoring the menses and with them the
general health .
The resemblance to Pulsatilla is most obvious .
In Dr. Eidherr's cases the 15th decimal dilution was that
used .
22
338 DIGITALIS .

We come now to a medicine of great interest and

importance, the purple foxglove,
Digitalis.
The tincture of the British Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia is
made from the leaves. This is of consequence, as they are
the only part of the plant which contains Digitaline, and
alcohol dissolves it freely.
Digitalis was proved by Hahnemann, with the expressed
juice of the leaves, for the Fragmenta de viribus, where its
pathogenesis contains 23 symptoms from himself, and 33
from ten authors. In the fourth volume of the Materia Medica
Pura his own symptoms have increased to 73, and there are
224 from ten fellow - provers ; while he has gone to thirty -seven
authors, and obtained from them 131 observations. These
were mostly made upon patients taking the drug, but are not
often vitiated on that account. The Chronic Diseases gives us
another pathogenesis, containing 702 symptoms. The addi
tional 300 are furnished by three new observers, and by the
experiments of Jörg and eight of his pupils, who proved the
drug in small doses--one to three grains - of the powdered
leaves. I should say that in the Materia Medica Puro
Hahnemann directs the seeds to be used, in the Chronic
Diseases the whole plant.
Upon these facts, and the few single experiments subse
quently made, were based in time past two excellent essays on
Digitalis,—that of Dr. Black in the fourth volume of the
British Journal of Homeopathy, and that of Dr. Bähr * which
obtained the prize of the Central Homeopathic Society of
Germany in 1858. Since their publication the literature
of the medicine has immensely increased. It has been
largely experimented with on animals both at home and
abroad, and its effects and modus operandi have excited
continual discussion. Its therapeutic applications, moreover,
* Digitalis Purpurea, Leipzig, 1859.
 DIGITALIS . 339

first made to scrofula , and then to phthisis, have received a

wide extension in the sphere of cardiac disease and other
disorders of the circulation. It therefore fills a large space
in the treatises of Wood, Ringer, and Phillips, and has been
made the subject of special monographs by Brunton , * Reith , f
and Fothergill. I In the twenty -first volume of the British
Journal of Homocepathy Dr. Madden and the present speaker
discussed the action of the drug on the heart in the light of
the new investigations so far as they had gone. To the
conclusions then arrived at I still in the main adhere ; but
the whole subject needs fresh exposition as it has received
renewed study.
I would first call your attention to the emetic effects of
Digitalis. The drug is not used medicinally to excite vomit
ing, as its other workings are undesirable. But its emetic
properties are undoubted, active, and specific. It sets up the
condition of nausea - with its depression, salivation , sweating,
and other phenomena — as powerfully as does Antimony ; and
its vomiting is severe , and, when once excited, often lasts for
days.
We have already studied the nausea and emesis produced
by drug -action when speaking of Tartar emetic. We have
seen that it is brought about by an influence on the nervous
centres at the base of the brain and in the medulla oblongata,
! and is conducted therefrom by the vagi. We have also seen
in the case of that drug a power to retard to a large extent
the action of the heart and lungs, and have found such power
explicable by a similar central impression and pneumogastric
transmission . Now the effect of Digitalis which most
struck the older observers was its slow pulse. They found
the rate reduced from its norm or higher to about 40, as
Hahnemann shows by numerous citations. To the same
effect is the testimony of all recent observation and experi
On Digitalis, Lond ., 1868.
† On the Actions and Uses of Digitalis, Edinb. Med . Journ ., 1868 .
1 Digitalis : its mode of action, and its use, Lond., 1871.
340 DIGITALIS .

ment. Some indeed speak of a primary acceleration, and

many more of the same thing occurring secondarily ; but
nearly all agree that retardation is the characteristic and
longest -lasting effect of the drug. Analogy would suggest .
that with Digitalis, as with Tartar emetic, the slow pulse is an
effect of the stimulation of the vagi; and the balance
experiment is decidedly in favour of the hypothesis. The
primary acceleration, noticed by several as an effect of small
doses, is readily thus accounted for, as a very weak galvanic
stimulation of the pneumogastrics is found to quicken the
heart'saction. Or it may be a result of the unopposed influence
of the ganglionic excitation of which I shall presently speak .
In the former case the pulse would be weaker, in the latter
stronger ; and both characters have been noticed in it by dif
ferent experimenters.
But now another fact encounters us . The retarded heart
beat of excitation of the vagi is always accompanied by
diminution of arterial pressure, whereas this last is notably
increased under the influence of Digitalis. We have thus to
suppose a similar action exerted by it upon the arteries them.
selves, through the medium of the vaso -motor nerves. Such an
action is acknowledged by all observers ; and, with hardly an
exception, is affirmed to be central rather than peripheral.
That is, it is effected by an influence exerted by the drug on
the vaso -motor centre which physiological research has dis
covered at the base of the brain , hard by the corpora quad
rigemina. * By this influence the whole arterial system is
thrown into a state of tension ; the vessels themselves are
contracted ; and the heart is stimulated to beat forcibly,and
would beat fast if the inbibitory power of the vagi would
permit. Thus it comes about that the slow pulse of Digitalis
is often a strong one.
These are the primary phenomena of the action of Digi
talis. It is seen to have just such a limited neurotic influ
* See Revue Homeopathique Belge, Jan., Feb., 1875.
 DIGITALIS . 341

ence as that which belongs to Tartar emetic (and also to

Lobelia and Tabacum ); an influence upon the group of
centres at the base of the brain which preside over vomiting
and control the circulation. It may either excite the first of
these alone ; or, if this be avoided , it stimulates the whole
nervous system - inhibitory and motor - of the circulation ,
holding heart and arteries in a firm grip. This increase of
tension by excitation of the vaso -motor centre is peculiar to it
among its cognate drugs.
But it is admitted by all observers that, after a time when
moderate doses, at once if large doses are given, an opposite
condition manifests itself. The pulse quickens, and becomes
weak, irregular and intermittent ; the arterial pressure, as
measured by the hæmadynamometer, falls. The heart's
action is still for a time forcible, but it is tumultuous. The
general symptoms are those of depressed circulation, with
lowered temperature ; there is syncope, and — if the dose be
large enough - death. It is the custom to speak of such
phenomena as those of reaction, from exhaustion of the
over- stimulated nerves . But I think that the gravest objec
tions lie against such an hypothesis. That the symptoms in
question appear primarily when poisonous doses are given ;
that no nervous exhaustion can stop the heart's action, as
long as the organ itself is healthy ; that after death so
induced the ventricles are found contracted and not dilated
these are insurmountable difficulties in the way of adopting
it. Some recoil there doubtless is after over-stimulation ; but
not to such an extent as that seen in the collapse of Digitalis
poisoning. I believe that we must look for an explanation of
this to an action of the drug upon the heart itself. That it
has such an action seems proved by the researches of M.
Claude Bernard, which have been strangely lost sight of in
the recent discussions about Digitalis. It is, according to
him,* one of the poisons which act directly upon the mus
cular tissue, paralysing and killing it. It affects that portion
See Med . Times and Gazette, Sept. 29, 1860.
342 DIGITALIS .

of muscular tissue which constitutes the heart earlier than

any other, so that in coldblooded animals like frogs the
heart's action may cease four hours before general death
ensues : there is (as has been said ) a dead heart in a living
body. Rigor mortis sets in exceedingly early ; and on open
ing the thorax immediately after death the heart is found
contracted, rigid, motionless, and totally empty. A further
examination discloses remarkable chemical and electrical
changes in the heart and other muscles. The muscular juice
is acid instead of alkaline; and the external surface is elec
trically negative to the cut surface, instead of (as normally)
positive.
By these views, as it seems to me—and all recent experi
mentation is in accordance with them -- all the phenomena
before us are elucidated. While Digitalis stimulates the
nervous supply of the circulation, it kills its muscular appa
ratus. The latter action is slower than the former, and is for
a time masked by it. But that, while pneumogastrics and
sympathetic are acting upon the heart, slowing and at the
same time urging its beat, it is nevertheless losing its inherent
vigour, is shown by a remarkable fact. It was often noted by
the older observers that though the pulse under the influence
of the drug was slow while the patient retained the recumbent
posture, it became enormously quickened - often to double its
rate and more — when he stood up. This could only be from
enfeeblement of the muscular walls of the heart, which endea
voured by increased rapidity of action to answer the additional
call made upon it. Thus rightly was the fact explained. The
same account must, I think , be given of the irregularity of
pulse so characteristic of the drug's action . The rhythm
of the heart's alternate contractions and expansions is a pro
perty of its tissue. It cannot be altered by any modification
of its nervous supply : it fails only as the muscular substance
itself loses its integrity .* Lastly, the symptoms and post
* “ Irregularity of rhythm is not due to disordered innervation, but to
obvious debility” (Fothergill, op . cit., p. 13).
.
 DIGITALIS . 343

mortem appearances which show the heart dying in systole

instead of diastole, which are thought to prove the drug a
cardiac stimulant to the last, receive their explanation. The
heart poisoned by Digitalis is contracted and not dilated ; but
the contraction is the rigor mortis. The immediate cause of
this phenomenon has been shown to be the change of the mus
cular juice from alkaline to acid ; and this very change is in
volved in the destructive action of the drug upon the integrity
of the muscular tissue .
It will be well, while these facts are before us, to speak of
the therapeutic virtues of Digitalis in the sphere of the circu
lation. Its power of slowing the heart's action was early
inade use of in the treatment of phthisis, where rapidity of
circulation is so obvious and exhausting ; and subsequently
by the Rasorists in Italy , and again of late years in Germany,
it has been largely employed in the treatment of fevers and
inflammations. In the former it certainly retarded the pulse,
but rarely checked the progress of the disease : in the latter
it effectually reduces the temperature, but does nothing to
abate-- if it does not actually increase — the mortality. It is
abandoned in phthisis ; and will inevitably share the same
fate in fever. Such primary stimulations are rarely available
for true curative purposes. The only really valuable applica
tion of this action of Digitalis seems to be in cases where the
orifices of the heart are narrowed, and the frequency of its
contractions prevents it from returning to a functionally
normal state, and keeps up the disturbance of the circulation.
It was in this cardiac condition that Digitalis was most fre
quently used of old ; and the physicians of the first half of
the present century speak in high terms of the benefit ob
tained by the temporary retardation of the heart's action
induced by the drug.
But it had early been noted by several — and notably by
Pereira and Sir Henry Holland — that, though it seemed
strange, a weak heart would grow strong and an intermittent
pulse become regular under the action of the foxglove. Such
 34.1 DIGITALIS .

experiences accumulated ; and, when physiological experiments

began to be made, it was thought that the facts were well
accounted for, and that Digitalis was after all a stimulant and
not a depressant of the heart. A rush was made in the oppo
site direction, and Dr. Handfield Jones gave utterance to the
general impression when he proclaimed the drug " our cardiac
tonic kår' étoxúv, specially to be resorted to in cases of
asthenia and peril from failing circulation." That such
effects can be produced by utilising the sympathetic channel
of the neurotic stimulation induced by Digitalis is, I think,
undoubted . It is surely this which is brought into play
in such cases of collapse as that recorded by Dr. Fother
gill . The patient - after aa labour with twins - was apparently
in articulo mortis : the limbs were cold, the body in a state of
deathly clammy sweat, the face livid , no pulse could be felt at
the wrists, and a mere fluttering was heard when the ear was
placed over the region of the heart. Brandy and ether had
been given without any good effect ; and , as dissolution was
every moment expected , it was decided to try Digitalis. Half
a-drachm of the tincture was given every hour ; after four
doses reaction set in, and after three more recovery was com
plete. Digitalis acts here on the hollow muscle of the heart
as it does on that of the uterus, stimulating it to contract;
and through the same ganglionic nerves. But, if Digitalis
acts upon the heart only through its nerves, it is difficult to
see how it can exercise more than a temporary stimulant in
fluence upon it. A drug can surely give strength to a tissue
only by acting directly upon the tissue itself, or upon the
blood which nourishes it. The theory is seen by many to be
fallacious ; and Brunton gives warning that a fragile heart
may easily rupture under stimulation, while Reith asserts that
sudden death is no uncommon result of the practice, account
ing for this by the anæmia of the organ caused by the con
traction of the coronary arterioles. Ringer finally argues
that the "tonic ” theory fails to explain the benefit wrought
 DIGITALIS . 345

by the drug in cardiac disease, and asserts that in simple

debility of the heart it is useless and even hurtful.
While these variations have been going on in the ranks of
the old school, Homeopathy has been pursuing with Digitalis,
as with other medicines, the even tenor of her way. I know
not how it has been with my colleagues, as there has been
little published on the subject : but for myself Digitalis has
always been a valued remedy in weakness of the heart. I
have regarded it as a cardiac tonic in disease because it is a
cardiac debilitant in health ; and have used it accordingly.
Simple enfeeblement of the muscular walls of the heart has
seemed to me a very common condition . Vertigo, tendency
to syncope, breathlessness on exertion, and palpitation - some
or all of these are its symptoms ; and it finds in Digitalis
a potent and rarely failing remedy. Again , the slow pulse of
the drug, seized upon by Hahnemann's penetration as the
characteristic feature of its action, has often led to its suc
cessful use in cases where it was present.
The use of Digitalis in organic disease of the heart is a
larger question. The old view of its operation led to its being
given in hypertrophy and over-action of the organ : now it is
prescribed for dilatation and debility - and in both one and
the other with good effects. Dr. Ringer has furnished a
most elaborate and practical survey of all the facts ; and
comes to the conclusion that Digitalis is useful in proportion
as the symptoms depend upon irregularity of the heart's
action. As such irregularity is prominent among its patho
genetic effects, the homeopathicity of its action is, if Dr.
Ringer be right, self -evident. It is no less so in the condi
tion which Dr. Phillips postulates for it, viz. a general
venous hyperæmia ; Dr. Ringer meaning the same thing
when he says that it is in heart disease with lividity and
The hypothesis of direct action upon the substance of the heart thus
implied is supported by what Trousseau and Pidoux note, that Digitalis
is less useful in functional (that is, nervous) than in organic disease of the
organ .
346 DIGITALIS .

jugular fulness, not in that with waxy pallor, that it is

available. “ Cyanosis ” has always been reckoned an indi
cation for it in homeopathic practice. Lastly, Digitalis so
often relieves the pain of cardiac disease that Dr. Walshe
calls it “ the opiate of the heart.” But he himself mentions
it among the drugs which cause " paræsthesia ” of the organ ;
and the sensations of its provers fully bear him out.
Before leaving this subject, I must speak of the action of
foxglove in dropsy, for it is generally in the cardiac form of
this disease that it is used. It is confessedly by no diuretic
operation that it benefits here, as its effects of this kind are
very uncertain . It only certainly increases the flow of urine
when dropsy is present. By removing the weakness or
irregularity of the heart on which the ædema of the limbs
depends, it allows of the reabsorption of the effused serum
into the relieved veins ; and then the kidneys take on the
work of pouring the fluid out from the body. This is Dr.
Ringer's explanation ; and it seems to me in perfect accord .
ance with the observed facts.
I have dwelt thus largely upon the principal sphere of the
action of the drug, as it was necessary to clear it from mis
apprehensions, and to vindicate the homeopathicity of most of
the benefit it affords. Beyond this sphere Digitalis is hardly
used in ordinary practice. Its occasional success in hæmor
rhages seems to belong to it , as it is supposed to check them
by contracting the arterioles, as Secale does. But patho
genetic experiment reveals a much wider range of influence
on the part of the drug ; and homeopathic therapeutics have
done much to utilise the same for the benefit of suffering
humanity. I can do little more than indicate the salient
points.
1. The influence of Digitalis upon the brain is evidenced
by various cerebral symptoms, and by consentaneous subjec
tive disorders of the sight and hearing. Headache, chiefly
frontal, heavy and throbbing in character, has often been
observed : the drug, when pushed in experiment, has threatened
 DIGITALIS . 347

to set up meningitis, and in poisoning by it delirium and

mania are not uncommonly observed. There is buzzing in
the ears ; and the sight is affected in a remarkable manner.
The colouring of objects is altered ; they appear blue or
green, or all faces seem of a corpse -like whiteness. Motes
float before the sight, which on covering and pressing the
eyes appear as sparks ; then flashes and balls of fire are seen,
and objects appear brilliant, with a fiery halo round them.
Last, amaurosis sets in ; which has been known to last for a
month after omitting the drug. With these disorders of
vision there is at first pressure in the eyeballs ; later, throbbing
pain and sense of fulness and enlargement.
The clue to all these phenomena (which remind one of
those of Quinine) seems afforded by the highly injected state
of the cerebral meninges which was found in the only post
mortem examination of Digitalis-poisoning Christison was able
to discover. The visual symptoms, like those of Santonine,
suggest congestion of the retina . For these the drug has
not been, to my knowledge, used therapeutically ; but Hahne
mann says that “ hardness of hearing, with hissing as of
boiling water, has been frequently cured by Digitalis, when
the other symptoms corresponded likewise to that drug .”
The head -symptoms have led to its use in acute hydroce
pbalus, for which it already comes to us with high repute,
Pereira accounting it “ a most valuable agent in the arach
nitis of children.” He, and Bähr with him, thinks this a
part of a general specific influence it exerts upon inflam
mation of serous membranes : the latter considers it appli
cable not only to the serous pleurisy for which Wurmb and
Fleischmann extol it, but to all forms of the disease, and
extols its virtues in pericarditis with much serous effusion .
As regards hydrocephalus, there are two instances of its
successful use in the seventh and twelfth volumes of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy, which are encouraging to
further trial of the drug in this fatal disease .
2. Of the mucous membranes, the stomach and descending
348 DIGITALIS .

-colon are specifically inflamed by Digitalis. It causes ash

coloured stools ; but not, I think, from any influence on the
liver. Dr. Inman has shown that the fæces do not become
brown until they reach the colon, and that the green stools of
infants assume their peculiar colour at this point also. It
would appear, therefore, that the secretion from the follicles
of the colon has an important influence on the colour of the
fæces ; and through these I conceive that Digitalis whitens
the stools, for it causes no other element of jaundice or sign
of hepatic disorder. Now it is no uncommon thing to be
consulted about children whose liver is said to be locked up,
because they are passing white chalky stools. There is no
jaundice ; and I do not believe that the liver is here in fault
at all , but that the secretion of the colon is deranged.
Digitalis is a capital remedy for this condition , as pointed
out by Drs. Chapman and Black . * I must tell you, however,
that true jaundice is said to have been occasionally cured
by it.
3. Upon the urinary organs Digitalis acts as a slight
irritant, causing — in such moderate doses as those taken by
Jörg's provers - diuresis, with varying amounts of the
urinary solids ; in acute poisoning, suppression ; and , occa
sionally, some strangury. I have already spoken of its
diuretic effects in cardiac dropsy. But in the renal form of
the disease its specific effect on the kidneys may give it a
place ; and we find Christison praising it in granular degenera
tion , while Dr. Dickinson esteems it the best medicine in the
acute Bright's disease which follows scarlatina.
4. A still more potent influence is exerted by Digitalis on
the male sexual organs . In Jörg's provings these were uni
formly excited , --one prover having to leave off after three
days on account of the extent to which the irritation pro
ceeded. Correspondingly, we hear every now and then of the
medicine being given as an anti -aphrodisiac, and in sperma
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., iv, 279.
 DIGITALIS . 3460

torrhæa. Dr. Bähr has the highest opinion of its value in

the last-named malady, and in nocturnal emissions. He gives ..
here a grain of the third decimal trituration of Digitaline
every second morning, saying that if taken at night it is
liable to disturb the sleep.
These are the main points of the action of Digitalis. If
you would enlarge them , I would refer you to Teste's article
on the drug-who says, by the way, that sadness is a charac
teristic feature of its action, both in men and animals ; and to
Dr. Bähr's excellent treatise, most of the recommendations of
which he has reproduced in his no less excellent Science of
Therapeutics.
Digitalis finds a good many parallel medicines in its many
sided action . As a myotic, its only fellows are Arnica,
Arsenic, and Phosphorus ; myalgia, cramp, and fatty degene
ration being to these drugs respectively what paralysis is to
Digitalis. In its influence on the pneumogastrics Digitalis
resembles Tartar emetic, Lobelia , and Tabacum ; as a rena )
poison its analogues are Colchicum and Scilla . In its action
on the heart it stands quite alone - Arsenic and Kalmia alone
approaching it at all in character.
The question of dose as regards Digitalis has some inte
resting points about it. It seems strange that a drug so
perfectly and primarily homeopathic to weakness of the heart
should not aggravate rather than improve this condition in
the full doses prescribed in the old school. Yet they seem to
obtain none but beneficial results from doses of the tincture
varying from 5 to 15 minims. Lately, a still more surprising
administration of the drug has taken place. The tincture
has been given in half -ounce doses, several times repeated, as
a remedy for delirium tremens, and does not seem to have
done any harm . Any attempt, however, to give the same
quantity of the infusion will bring on distressing and some
times alarming symptoms,—while yet the tincture is eight
times stronger. It is a fair inference from these facts, that
the presence of alcohol-as in the tincture - directly opposes
350 DIGITALINE .

the action of the drug : which in its turn may be antidotal to

alcohol, and perhaps in this way be beneficial in delirium
tremens. If, then , the tincture be used for homeopathic
purposes, the counteracting influence of the alcohol must be
borne in mind, and the lowest potencies selected . I have
never seen any benefit from the dilutions above the 1st
centesimal, and generally use the 1st decimal or mother
tincture ; which also seems to be the general practice.
A word in conclusion about
Digitaline, which appears to possess at least the cardiac and
renal influence of the mother-drug. It has occasionally been
used in heart disease with dropsy instead of Digitalis, as in a
case recorded in the seventh volume of the North American
Journal of Homoeopathy. It would be a suitable form of the
drug when given to check its characteristic vomiting. Digi
taline may be triturated , or dissolved in alcohol of 90° ; or it
may be given in the granules of Homolle and Quevenne, each
of which contains a milligramme, i.e. about the sixty-fifth of
a grain. These have to be used cautiously, however, if the
assertion of their designers is correct, that Digitaline is a
hundred times as strong as the powdered leaf of the plant.
 LECTURE XX .

DIOSCOREA, DROSERA, DULCAMARA , ELATERIUM, EUPATORIUM

PERFOLIATUM AND PURPUREUM , EUPHORBIUM ,
EUPHRASIA, FERRUM .

We have before us to -day a group of minor medicines,

ending with a more important one in Ferrum .
The first is the “ wild yam root,”
Dioscorea villosa .
A tincture is prepared from the root ; but the special
virtues of the drug appear to reside in the resinoid, Dios
corein, triturations of which are accordingly in most frequent
use .

Our knowledge of the drug is derived from Dr. Hale's New

Remedies .
Dioscorea is a medicine for one disease,—that known as
“ bilious colic.” Experience seems unanimous as to its
sovereign efficacy in this disorder. The small doses which we
affect act as well as the larger quantities of the Eclectics, to
whom we owe the drug. Moreover, the four persons who
have proved it concur in reporting severe pain about the
umbilical region as the most marked of their symptoms. Dr.
Helmuth, from clinical experience, considers that the colic
demanding Dioscorea is more continuous than that to which
Colocynth is suited .
From one to three grains of the first trituration of Dios
corein form the usual dose.
352 DROSERA .

Next, we have the sun-dew,

Drosera .

The tincture of homeopathic practice --- in which alone

Drosera is used — is prepared from the entire fresh plant.
The pathogenesis appears in the sixth volume of the Reine
Arzneimittellehre, containing 132 symptoms from Hahnemann
himself, 152 from three fellow -observers, and 3 from
authors.
The most significant fact in this pathogenesis is the spas
modic cough induced by the drug. Hahnemann's wonted
sagacity led him to perceive this ; and he recommended the
medicine accordingly in pertussis. If after-experience has not
quite verified his statement that a single dose of Drosera 30
will cure whooping -cough in a week, it has nevertheless
sustained the drug in the first rank of remedies for the
disease. The common experience is that of Dr. Bayes, that
repeated doses of the first or first decimal dilution will bring
most uncomplicated cases of whooping - cough to an end
within two, three, or four weeks, greatly mitigating the
severity of the paroxysms meanwhile. I myself prefer
Aconite and Ipecacuanha in the catarrhal stage ; but quite
agree in the praise given to Drosera when the cough has
become spasmodic.
It is of course not essential that a spasmodic cough should
be true pertussis for Drosera to cure it : in sympathetic and
nervous coughs of this kind it often acts admirably. Dr.
Jousset * considers its power here one of the best illustrations
we have of the efficacy of infinitesimal doses. “ Cough from
tickling in the larynx, with vomiting of food, ” being the
precise definition of its sphere of action, he communicates
107 instances of it, of which 101 were relieved or cured by the
medicine. The third, twelfth, and thirtieth dilutions were
found alike efficacious, and superior to the mother-tincture.
* Brit. Journ, of Hom ., xxvi , 210.
 DROSERA . 353

One of Hahnemann's provers had a hoarse voice and

expectoration of yellow mucus with his cough, which sug
gested to him its use in laryngeal phthisis when he remem
bered the statements of the herbals and of the country people,
that the sundew causes a violent cough in sheep, under which
they waste away . He says that some of the older physicians
have cured certain kinds of malignant cough and purulent
phthisis with it ; but that in modern times its acridity has
caused its disuse. Influenced by such facts, Dr. Curie of
Paris - whose doings with Bryonia have already come before
us — determined to ascertain by experiment its real action .
He reported to the French Academy of Sciences * that he had
slowly poisoned three cats with daily doses of Drosera . Diar
rhæa at the commencement, and weakness of voice about six
weeks later, are the only symptoms mentioned as observed
during life. But, on post-mortem examination, the trachea
was found unchanged, while the pleural surface of both lungs
was studded with what the microscope decided to be true
tubercle . In one cat the mesenteric glands were much
enlarged ; in another the submaxillary glands, with the
solitary glands of the large intestine and Peyer's patches.
Now as cats are not at all liable to tubercle, I think it cannot
be doubted that Drosera here caused the deposit, with the
consentaneous enlargement of the lymphatic glands. Putting
this together with the effects ascribed to it in sheep, it looks
very much as if Drosera would turn out a true simile for
phthisis pulmonalis. Dr. Curie, indeed, asserts that in
the incipient stage of the disease a cure may nearly always be
brought about by Drosera , given in doses of from four to
twenty drops of the mother - tincture in the twenty -four hours.
I can only say that I once gave drop doses four times a day,
with the effect of setting up a most violent spasmodic cough ,
which subsided to the ordinary cough of phthisis when the
medicine was discontinued . Dr. Jousset found a similar

See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xx, 39.

23
354 DULCAMARA .

aggravation in two cases out of six which he treated on Dr.

Curie's plan . In two others the effect was nil, and in the
remaining two a primary amelioration did not last. I know
of no other trials of the remedy.
Acidum hydrocyanicum , Acidum nitricum , Belladonna, Che
lidonium, Cina, Corallium , Cuprum , Hyoscyamus, Ipecacuanha,
Nux vomica , and Sambucus should be compared with Drosera
in their relation to spasmodic coughs.
I suspect that Dr. Curie's mother-tincture will have to be
modified no less than Hahnemann's thirtieth . I myself bave
been very well satisfied with the first dilution.

My next medicine is the bitter-sweet or woody night-shade,

Solanum
Dulcamara.
We use a tincture prepared from the leaves and green shoots.
The proving of Dulcamara appears in the first volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre, where the drug has 318 symptoms
from Hahnemann and ten fellow - provers, and 83 from
authors. Most of these last are taken from Carrére and his
German editor, Starke, and are nearly always critical and
curative effects of the medicine when given to patients.
They cannot, therefore, without great caution be used as
pathogenetic phenomena. The proving in the Chronic
Diseases has only 8 additional symptoms.
Hahnemann found Dulcamara in use for a variety of affec
tions supposed to depend upon a vitiated state of the blood,
which it seemed to benefit by determining to the periphery or
increasing the secretions. The fullest account of its applica
tions is that published by Carrére in 1789.* He relates
many cases of gout, rheumatism , and cutaneous disease, and
of suppression of the latter or of the secretions, in which it
proved very effectual, always, however, by inducing some
* Traité des propriétés, usages, et effets de la Douce -Amère, Paris,
1789.
 DULCAMARA . 355

critical evacuant phenomena . Hahnemann, whose numerous

citations show how largely he has used Carrére's work, cites
these eruptions, diarrheas, sweatings, and urinary depositions
as pathogenetic effects of the drug. This I conceive to be
unwarrantable, unless the same results can be obtained on
the healthy, of which there is no evidence. It is therefore
very doubtful whether its benefit in the squamous forms of
| cutaneous disease, so largely vouched for by the older physi
cians, is of a specific and homeopathic nature. It neither
causes such affection of the skin in the healthy, nor does it
cure without evacuation . Its only certain cutaneous action
is to excite erythematous and urticarious rashes, and pru
ritus; and it is in urticaria, and in such forms of impetigo as
crusta lactea, that it has found place in homeopathic
practice.
But there are other effects of the drug observed by Carrére
which Hahnemann has incorporated into his pathogenesis,
and which seem to be truly physiological. This author
says that, after seventeen years' use of the drug, he has
seen no inconvenience from full doses, save occasionally some
twitching of the eyelids and lips, and slight convulsive
movements of the hands ; heat and itching, with desire, in
the genitals ; heaviness of the head , with dimness of sight ;
and sore throat. The critical eruptions, moreover , were often
preceded by restlessness, insomnia, and even a febrile state .
Of the first-named phenomena -- those of the eyelids, lips, and
hands - he makes the curious observation that they only
occurred when the patient was exposed to cold, damp weather,
and that they could be readily removed by external warmth.
Hence has arisen one of those happy defining rules which
abound in homeopathic therapeutics, viz. that Dulcamara is
indicated for the result of exposure to damp. It is certainly
an excellent remedy here. I am myself very liable to catch
cold if I get at all wet ; but since I have (acting on a sugges
tion of Dr. Chapman's) taken Dulcamara on such occasions as
a prophylactic, I have hardly ever suffered. Twice, too, 1
356 DULCAMARA .

have arrested in myself incipient results of moist air by

Dulcamara ; the first time it was angina, the second time stiff
neck. The medicine is also useful in diarrhea resulting
from a chill in damp weather ; in catarrh of the bladder from
the same cause - even, Dr. Drury says,* when chronic, with
much mucus and offensive urine ; and indeed in almost any
mild catarrhal irritation of the mucous membranes owning
this origin. Its influence extends also to subacute articular
rheumatism in this way set up. Hahnemann, who was the
first to indicate these anti -catarrhal properties of Dulcamara,
says also that it is specific in some epidemic fevers, but does
not identify them.
So far extended our knowledge of Dulcamara before its
active principle was isolated . This is known as Solania, and
is found to be common to it and the Solanum nigrum , though
in much smaller proportion in the former than in the latter.
Solania has now been pretty fully tested by experiments on
animals, of which the most satisfactory are those of Professor
Clarus, who also took it himself : you may read them in
English in the eighteenth volume of the British Journal of
Homeopathy. Two very important phenomena were ob
served, the one of neurotic, the other of irritant character.
The first was that the respiration became much slower, the
heart's action much quicker (though at the same time
feebler). Since this curious antagonism is also caused by
division of the vagi in the neck, Professor Clarus infers that
Dulcamara acts by depressing these very nerves. Such
depression is also indicated by the filling of the pulmonary
tissue with a serous exudation, and the emphysematous dis
tension of isolated portions of the lung, which were observed
in the rabbits killed by Solania : --these phenomena having
resulted also from division of the vagi. Other symptoms also
indicate an action on the medulla oblongata , as vomiting
long after taking the drug, spasms of the thoracic muscles
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxviii, 174.
 ELATERIUM . 357

extending to those of the extremities, snapping of the jaws,

and a pendulum -like motion of the head. After death, the
membranes of the medulla oblongata, and the parts just
above and below : it, were found highly injected, but the
nervous substance itself healthy.
Subsequent experimentation (of which a good account is
given by Dr. Phillips) has confirmed this neurotic action of
Solania, only giving as its first effect a hurried state of the
respiration, which is probably the earliest response of the
medulla to the disturbing influence of the drug. It supports,
moreover, Clarus' second observation, viz. hyperæmia of the
kidneys with albuminous urine, and shows the engorgement
sometimes going on to inflammation, and involving the liver
also .
I know of no application to practice of the irritant
phenomena of Solania, though it might seem indicated in the
first stage of Bright's disease. But I have now for years
been in the habit of relying upon it in the threatening
paralysis of the lungs which we so often encounter in the
bronchitis of old people and young children . It has several
times done me excellent service in this condition ; and not
less so in a minor form of the trouble in the aged, when
from weakness they have to cough a long time to expel the
phlegm .
Dulcamara has so very unique an action that I hardly see
my way to putting down any other medicines as true
analogues of it.
The medium dilutions have seemed to answer very well.
Solania I have always given in the second attenuation of the
acetate .

We come now to an old acquaintance of yours,

Elaterium .
The dried sediment of the juice is triturated for our use.
358 ELATERIUM .

There is a short proving of Elaterium , made with the

second dilution, in Esrey's Collection.
It is needless to describe to you the physiological action of
Elaterium . Nevertheless, it has been so graphically put by
Dr. T. K. Chambers, that I cannot refrain from quoting his
account of the drug. “ It causes,” he says, “ an enormous
flow of watery serum from the first mucous membrane that
absorbs it. If its vapour be drawn up into the nostrils for a
short time, it is a powerful errhine, and is followed by the
secretion of floods of water from the Schneiderian membrane :
--if it is dissolved in the esophagus it causes such a deluge
of the gastric fluids, that the stomach cannot contain them ,
and they are rejected by vomiting : if it succeeds in passing
the pylorus, a choleraic diarrhea gushes forth , stripping the
membrane of its epithelium , just like its morbid prototype."
Elaterium would thus seem homeopathic to choleraic diarrhæa
and vomiting. There is this difference, however, that the
prolonged action of Elaterium sets up gastro-enteritis, which
the cholera poison never does . I think that nevertheless I
should be disposed to try it where the excessive quantity of
the evacuations was especially noticeable. There are several
cases of endemic cholera reported at the end of the proving,
in which Elaterium was successful after Veratrum had failed.
-Some well -marked rheumatico -neuralgic pains, also, appear
in the proving, and have led to a cure of one case of rheumatic
sciatica. Intermittent fever, too, counts Elaterium among
the numerous medicines which at various times have cured or
seemed to cure it .
Elaterium forms a group with Colchicum, Crolon, and
Veratrum .
The second dilution was given in nearly all the cases
reported in the proving.

We have next an American medicine, the thorough-wort,

bone-set, ague- weed,
 EUPATORIUM PERFOLIATUM . 359

Eupatorium perfoliatum .
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
The original proving of Eupatorium , also, is in Esrey's
Materia Medica of American Provings. Cases of cure with it
are there given : but the most complete collection of all
pathogenetic and clinical records of the action of Eupatorium
is to be found in Dr. Hale's New Remedies.
Eupatorium has long been highly esteemed on the Ameri
can continent as a remedy against ague ; hence its popular
name among the Indians, " ague-weed .” Its other appel
lation, " bone -set," is obtained from the remarkable power it
showed in relieving the bone -pains of influenza in an epidemic
of this disease. The pains were so severe that the malady
was spoken of as the “break-bone fever.” The provings of
Homeopathy have enabled us to define the precise sphere of
Eupatorium in the treatment of these maladies. In inter
mittents the setting in of thirst before the chill, which
usually occurs in the morning, bilious vomiting during the
paroxysms, and scanty perspiration at its close, are charac
teristic symptoms calling for its use. If, also , the peculiar
bone-pains are present, the medicine is doubly indicated : you
may read a case of this kind by Dr. Bayes in the first volume
of the Annals of the British Homeopathic Society. I have
no experience of Eupatorium in intermittents ; but can add
my testimony to its extreme value in relieving the bone -pains
of influenza. Dr. Carroll Dunham has lately directed atten
tion to the marked hepatic action of Eupatorium , which he
compares with that of Bryonia .** The group of symptoms to
which he refers are intense headache with soreness of the
scalp, soreness of the eyes, redness of the face, nausea and
prostration, soreness in the region of the liver, constipation ,
and high -coloured urine. He gives a capital case of “ bilious
fever,” in which these symptoms, with violent bone- pains, were
* Amer. Hom . Rev., vi, 229.
360 EUPATORIUM PURPUREUM .

present, and which was broken up by Eupatorium 3 with

marvellous rapidity .
Besides the Bryonia already referred to, I do not know of
any true analogue of Eupatorium . Dr. Dunham points out
as elements of distinction between these two - first, that the
perspiration is free in Bryonia, deficient in Eupatorium ;
second, that Eupatorium pains make the patient restless, those
of Bryonia make him keep very still.
The range of recorded use has been from the 3rd dilution
to the mother -tincture.

More recently another species of Eupatorium has come into

notice, the

Eupatorium purpureum .
A tincture is prepared from the fresh root.
A capital proving on a woman, and some cases of cure, are
given in the second edition of Hale's New Remedies. *
The interest of E. purpureum centres in its action on the
urinary organs. In moderate doses, it acts as a powerful
diuretic ; and the frequent emptying of the bladder which is
necessary seems almost entirely due to the excess of urine
secreted. But even thus there are some symptoms of vesical
irritation ; and, when larger doses are taken , these unmistake
ably increase. Micturition now becomes more frequent, urgent,
and painful: the urine is scanty, mucus appears in it, and
later on it is high -coloured and dense. The reading of these
phenomena is plain : and the therapeutical indications are
easily perceived. Three good cases of inflammatory irritation
of the bladder are given in Dr. Hale's article, and others are
referred to. The drug has become my favourite remedy for
vesical irritability in women : I have not tried it upon men.
* Arrangements of the symptoms, pathogenetic and curative, of both
species of Eupatorium are given by Dr. Hering in his volume of Materia
Medica .
 EUPHORBIUM . 361

It may also possibly find a place in the treatment of dropsy ;

and has effected a cure of some intermittents.
The chief analogues are Cantharis, Copaiba, and Ferrum .
The second dilution was used in the cases on record ; and
I have myself never required any other.

My next medicine,

Euphorbium ,
is, as you are probably aware, the gum -resin of the Euphorbia
canariensis or officinarum . Of late, the American Euphorbia
corollata has been introduced into practice ; it is prepared by
triturating the dried root.
Euphorbium was proved by Hahnemann :: its pathogenesis,
containing 281 symptoms from himself and two others, is in
the second edition of the Chronic Diseases. There is an article
on Euphorbia corollata in Hale's New Remedies.
Euphorbium , belonging as it does to the family which in
cludes Croton, Ricinus, and Jatropha, is another instance of
the drastic purgative, and gives us another remedy for
endemic cholera and choleraic diarrhoea . The E. corollata
has been a good deal used in America in cholera infantum .
It is much less liable to cause inflammation than the other
Euphorbiæ, and is accordingly better suited to these non
inflammatory disorders. When applied to the skin, Euphor
bium, like Croton, causes an eczematous inflammation : but
it is not known whether this is a specific effect of its action .
Dr. Chapman * relates a case of spasmodic cough, charac
terised by accompanying stitches from the pit of the stomach
to both sides of the chest, in which Euphorbium proved
rapidly curative. He (as also Noack and Trinks) commends
it for red inflammatory swelling of the cheek, with sensation
of burning heat.
Besides the members of its own family already mentioned,
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., viii, 31.
362 EUPHRASIA .

Euphorbium is closely allied with Veratrum and Colchicum ,

with Elaterium , and with Tartar emetic.
We have no records in any degree fixing its dose.
We now come to a medicine for which I confess an especial
penchant, the eye-bright,

Euphrasia .
The homeopathic tincture is prepared from the whole
plant.
Hahnemann has given us a pathogenesis of Euphrasia in
the fifth volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 37
symptoms from himself, 58 from three fellow -observers, and 2
from authors. A proving by five other persons is translated
from the Austrian Journal in the sixteenth volume of the
British .
The great charm of Euphrasia as a medicine is that it has
a distinct and limited sphere of action, beyond which it
advances no pretensions, but within which it manifests virtues
which are as unvarying as they are potent. It acts upon the
upper portion of the respiratory mucous membrane, i. e. upon
its conjunctival and nasal portions , hardly reaching the larynx.
It develops in this region a catarrhal inflammation , generally
characterised by profuse secretion . Hence it takes a first
place among the remedies for fluent coryza, when this is a local
affection , and not a symptom of general influenza, in which
case Arsenic is preferable. The involvement of the conjunc
tiva in the catarrh is a special indication for Euphrasia ; and
sometimes the secretion from the eyes is acrid, while that
from the nares is bland,—the opposite condition obtaining
with Arsenic. The coryza which accompanies the commence
ment of measles is one to which Euphrasia is well suited :*
and I nearly always give it in this stage in alternation with
Aconite, and have reason to believe that the eyes are the better
* Brit. Journ ., xi, 484.
 EUPHRASIA . 363

for it at the time and afterwards . The eyes themselves, indeed ,

are the special seat of the influence of Euphrasia. Its name
in most languages refers to its healing power over these
organs (in English it is eye -bright; in German, Augen -trost ;
in French, casse -lunettes) : and you know how the Archangel
in Milton, when he would clear the vision of our first parent,
" purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see . ”

This is one of the many instances in which Homeopathy

has revived and confirmed, while defining, the old traditions
about herbs. Conjunctivitis is very marked in the provings,
with photophobia, and there are even indications of affection of
the deeper tissues and of vision . Correspondingly, Euphrasia
is among the chief of our eye -medicines. In simple acute
conjunctivitis it is rare that any other remedy is required ;
and in the chronic stage it has often effected cures. Given at
the commencement of strumous ophthalmia, it will nearly
always check incipient ulceration : but its action needs sus
taining by constitutional medicines, especially Sulphur. It
comes in again later to remove specks on the cornea, for which
it is very efficacious. Lately Dr. Dudgeon bas communicated
two cases to the British Journal of Homoeopathy ,* in which a
rapid cure of rheumatic ophthalmia ( sclerotitis and iritis ) was
effected by Euphrasia , after other remedies had failed. There
is, moreover, an interesting communication by Dr. Robert
Jackson in the twenty -third volume of the Medical and Physi
cal Journal (1810) , in which he relates several cases where
chronically impaired vision , coexisting with signs or feelings
of disorder in the eyeballs, was greatly benefited by an infu
sion of the plant. Used in this manner, I know of no medi
cine which will less frequently disappoint expectation than the
little eye -bright.
The analogues of Euphrasia are Æthusa, Allium cepa, Apis,
* Vol. xxii, p. 355.
361 FERRUM .

Argentum nitricum, Arsenicum , Belladonna , Hepar sulphuris,

Kali bichromicum , Kali hydriodicum, Mercurius solubilis and
corrosivus, Pulsatilla , and Sulphur.
Small doses of the mother-tincture, as recommended by
Hahnemann himself, appear to answer all purposes excellently
>

well .

We bave, in conclusion, to consider the action and uses of

one of the most celebrated of medicines,
Ferrum .
For the preparation of the salts of Iron used in homeopathie
practice I must refer you to the Pharmacopæia. Our only
peculiarity is the frequent use of the acetate, as with this were
made nearly all the provings of the metal we possess.
Ferrum was proved by Hahnemann and three others : their
261 symptoms,with 37 from seven authors, appear in the second
volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. Hempel has acci
dentally omitted this pathogenesis in his translation ; but the
deficiency has been supplied in the thirty -second volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy. In the ninth volume of
the same journal may be read another proving of the metal
by five of Rademacher's followers, where the blood was
examined before and after the experiments.
The primary interest of Iron lies in its remedial power over
anæmia. From whatever cause this condition may arise,
whether it be the chlorosis of defective menstruation , or the
simple " poverty of blood " induced by hæmorrhages, defi
ciency of air, light, and suitable food, or by exhausting
diseases-Iron is its one great remedy. It so rarely fails to
cure, and its action is so tuto , cito, et jucunde, that it would be
unpardonable to deprive any patient of its benefits, whatever
be our theory of its action or the manner in which it must be
given . The treatment of anæmia by Iron is one of the few
satisfactory and certain things in modern medicine, and we
 FERRUJ . 365

who believe in the supreme value of the homeopathic method

may not neglect it because it does not seem conformable
thereto, unless we can do better. That we cannot is the
general confession ; we must, therefore, give our anamic
patients the Iron they need, in whatever quantity may be
necessary .
But while we follow facts rather than theory, it is never
theless of considerable importance that we understand the
theory of our facts, that we may know what we are about.
How does Iron act in the treatment of anæmia ? Is it aa food
or a medicine ? and, if a medicine, is it homeopathic or
antipathic to the condition present ? These are questions
which have been largely discussed in both schools of medicine,
and which can hardly be said to be closed. I shall submit to
you a few facts and considerations bearing upon them, which
may help us to come to a decision .
First of all we notice that iron, like lime, is a normal
constituent of the body, and is continually being supplied
with the food . It is, again , in the red corpuscles of the blood
that the metal finds its habitat and performs its functions.
Now it is the deficiency of these very corpuscles wherein the
" poverty of blood ” we call anæmia consists . It is impossible
to deny the significance of such facts, or to resist the con
clusion that the relation of iron to the blood is a fact of the
same order as that of lime to the bones .
Is iron, then , a direct food ? is it merely by supplying a
want of its normal proportion in the body that it cures
anæmia ? This position cannot, I think, be sustained. The
malady does not ordinarily arise from any failure in the
quantity of iron supplied in the food : if the element is
deficient in the blood, the fault lies in the assimilative pro
cesses .
But Reveil, according to Trousseau and Pidoux, has
ascertained that in anæmia there is no change whatever in
the amount of iron present in the blood. However few the
corpuscles, they contain within them the full proportion of
the metal normal to health ; and, though under the influence
366 FERRUM .

of iron itself they increase to double and treble their number,

they yield no more iron .
Not, then, from want of their metallic constituent, but from
deficiency of the red corpuscles themselves, is the blood poor
in the condition we call anæmia. And why are the corpuscles
few ? Their development is the ultimate result of the
elaboration of the vital fluid ; their defect must be owing to a
fault somewhere existing in the blood -making processes. Can
we remedy such fault merely by giving an increased quantity
of the pabulum from which they are built up ? It can hardly
be so. If the parts concerned in sanguification have proved
unable to perform their task hitherto, they will not work the
better because more material is supplied for their operations.
What is wanted is a stimulus, elective in its affinity for the
parts concerned, and specific in its correspondence with the
morbid condition induced .
That we have such a stimulus in Iron appears from two
classes of facts -- first, its effects on the healthy ; second, its
operation in small doses in disease.
1. The hæmatic effect of Iron on the healthy does not appear
with any distinctness in the provings of Hahnemann. The
pale face and lips he cites from Ritter were the result of
metrorrhagia induced by Iron, not its primary effect. But in
the experiments conducted by Löffler, the Rademacherian,
the blood itself was examined before and after the experi
ments. In all cases there was increase of the water, and a
corresponding diminution of the dry residuum. The general
condition and appearance, moreover, which at first improved
during the ingestion of the medicine, rapidly fell off after
wards, and assumed all the characters of debility and
hydræmia. It is a fair inference that Ferrum , when given in
health in quantities beyond those required for nutriment,
disorders those very processes of sanguification in which
it takes part as a food . We need yet more precise experi
mentation as to its effect on the number of the red cor
puscles, which can now be counted without difficulty. If,
 FERRUM . 367

as has been shown with Mercury and syphilis, it is found to

reduce their number in health while augmenting it in chlorosis,
its homeopathicity to anæmia will be established . In such
experimentation, however, it must be borne in mind that few
persons are in such perfect health that aa small addition to the
pabulum of their tissues is needless and injurious. It is only
when these are as it were saturated that morbid phenomena
can be expected to appear.
Our only other source of information as to the effects of
Iron on the healthy is the condition of people who habitually
drink ferruginous waters. Hahnemann gives a grievous list of
maladies as those to which they are subject, all implying
great depression of the nutritive powers. But I know not
on what authority he makes his statements, nor am I
acquainted with any careful observations on the subject.
2. But, in the next place, we have evidence that Iron, in
doses far too small to be of any use as pabulum , has proved
curative in anæmia . Dr. Russell relates one case in the
twelfth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy ( p . 376 ).
Dr. Drysdale, in his excellent discussion on the action of Iron
in the twenty -seventh volume of the same journal, cites
another. But the most forcible testimony is that of Dr.
Bayes, who speaks of one or two drops of the first dilution of
the acetate as an excellent chalybeate; and writes— “ The
exhibition of Iron in doses of the thousandth of a grain (the
third decimal dilution) has been, very generally, followed by
more rapid amendment in the ferruginizing of the blood (and
the consequent cure
of diseased conditions and states of parts
and organs) than I have hitherto seen result from the gross
and material doses of the chemical physicians.” Such
experience may be exceptional, but it could not have been
gained at all had Ferrum no action as a specific stimulus on
blood -making over and above that which makes it aa food .
The conclusion , then , I think must be that the metal has
such action — that it probably hinders the formation of red
blood in health and certainly promotes it in disease in the
368 FERRUM .

same manner in which other drugs affect the functions. But

while this is true, and Ferrum may be given for anæmia in
small doses as a homeopathic medicine, it must not be for
gotten that it is also aa food, and is required as such . Doubt
dess a larger supply of nourishment would meet the want ;
but this is not always possible to obtain, or even then to
digest. Iron may therefore with advantage be given as food
in all cases of anæmia, even though itself or some other
medicine should be administered at the same time. The
latter should be given on an empty stomach, that it may act
as a stimulus ; the former should be taken at meal-time, since
it is part of the pabulum of the body. These conclusions are
the same as those of Dr. Drysdale, whose exhaustive paper on
the subject I would strongly urge you to read .
But now, over and above the hæmatic action of Iron, it has
properties, pathogenetic and curative, of no mean importance.
In the infinitesimal doses of the older homeopathists, it did
little save occasionally check vomiting of the ingesta and
lienteria . But, given in a less attenuated form , it has received
strong testimony to its value in many disorders of the head,
the lungs , and the pelvic organs in general.*
1. The determination of blood to the head which follows
overdosing with Iron is well known, and ought to be utilised
in our practice. Dr. Kidd has found the pyrophosphate
( first decimal) very useful in headaches of passive congestion ;
I have also learned to depend upon it, in preference even to
China, in the pseudo -hyperæmic headaches following large
losses of blood. Dr. Cooper (and my own experience confirmis
his) has much confidence in it in recurrent epistaxis, giving the
first trituration of the phosphate.
2. The provings of Iron show that it determines blood to
the lungs no less than to the head. It has accordingly become
a favourite remedy in our school for hæmoptysis. Dr. Kidd
* Statements made without references in what follows are mostly taken
from a paper by Dr. Cooper “ On the Action of Iron,” with the discussion
Following its reading, contained in the fifth volume of the Annals.
 FERRUM . 369

and Mr. Pope concur in esteeming the acetate, in the first

decimal dilution , above all other remedies for this accident,
especially when a tickling cough and oppression of the
chest are present. Trousseau has pointed out how often
the incautious use of the drug causes this hæmorrhage, and so
leads on to phthisis. On this subject I refer you to Dr. Cl.
Müller's remarks in the eighteenth volume of the British
Journal. He recommends it from experience in the so - called
“ phthisis florida, ” in the form of the chloride from 18 to 3.
3. Iron is a decided irritant of the urethra and neck of the
bladder, and the chloride has some repute in the treatment of
3
vesical catarrh and of gleet : Dr. Kidd also speaks highly of it
:

in urinary irritation. But we owe to Dr. Cooper a very pretty

bit of precisionising, which indicates the especial sphere of
action of Ferrum in this region . You will find his original
paper in the fifth volume of the Annals of the British
Homeopathic Society, and his more detailed observations in
the twenty -eighth volume of the British Journal. The enuresis
calling for it is characteristically diurnal,--depending on an
irritability of the trigone and cervix vesicæ, which diminishes
when the pressure of the urine is taken off by the recumbent
posture. He gives ten well-marked cases of this affection
cured by the Phosphate of Iron in the 1st or 2nd decimal
trituration . I have verified his suggestions with much
success. — There is some reason to think that Iron acts also on
the kidneys. Its repute in Bright's disease is well known,
and it is admitted that the urine may become more scanty or
more deeply coloured and albuminous after its use . I quote
from Dr. George Johnson on Diseases of the Kidneys. In
the discussion on Dr. Cooper's paper, Dr. Metcalfe mentioned
a case in which from a single overdose of Iron suppression of
urine occurred , with head -symptoms like those of uræmia,
relieved as soon as the secretion was restored, and the Iron
eliminated .
4. The pelvic symptoms of Ferrum are analogous to those
of the head and the thorax. Dr. Kidd recommends it in
24
370 FERRUM.

uterine congestion and menorrhagia : Dr. Cooper in tenesmus

of the cervix uteri similar to that of the bladder in diurnal
enuresis . But the strongest testimony to its value as a
uterine remedy comes from our American colleague, Dr. H. C.
Preston , to whom we owe Hamamelis. He tells us that the
1st trituration of the Iodide of Iron has proved a most useful
medicine in his hands in uterine displacements, including
retroversion and prolapsus. You will find his observations in
the twenty -fifth volume of the British Journal of Homeo
pathy.
5. When , as in one of his cases, the rectum is much
irritated in sympathy with the womb, Ferrum will set it right.
But the provings evidence an independent action on this part
in the male subject also, showing itself mainly by tenesmus.
Dr. Cooper finds it the best remedy for prolapsus recti in
children. Dr. Markwick has put on record a case in which
its overuse caused dysenteric symptoms*—a fact which may
find practical applications.
Dr. Cooper, who has done much useful work in enlarging
and defining the applications of Ferrum , has lately given ust
another paper on the subject. In this he lays down “ painless
irritability of fibre ” as the condition especially calling for it,
thus giving it place as a remedy for some forms of cough, as
well as for those other expulsive actions whose impatience and
excess it has already been seen to moderate.
As a hæmatic , Ferrum has no true analogue, unless it be
Manganese. The medicines which act like it on the head are
Belladonna, Gelseminum , Nux vomica , and Quinine ; on the
lungs, Millefolium and perhaps Arnica ; on the bladder,
Cantharis, Copaiba, and Eupatorium purpureum ; and on the
uterus and rectum, Sabina .
The best doses have been mentioned as we have proceeded .
As a chalybeate food I like nothing so well as the Ferrum
redactum of the British Pharmacopeia, of which a grain or
two daily answers every purpose.
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xix, 309. + Ibid ., xxxii, 409.
 LECTURE XXI .

GAMBOGE, GELSEMINUM , GLONOIN, GRAPHITES, GRATIOLA ,

GUAIACUM .

I BEGIN this lecture with a drug which generally appears in

homeopathic works under its old name of “Gummi gutta ,"
but which may as well stand here as
Gambogia .
The Siamese resin so called is dissolved in rectified spirit to
form aa tincture for our use .
There is a pathogenesis of Gamboge in Jahr's Manual,
taken from an unpublished monograph by Cajetan Nenning,
the " Ng." of Hahnemann's provings.
There is no evidence, here or elsewhere, of any action of
Gamboge beyond that which belongs to it as a drastic purga
tive; and in this sphere only has it received homeopathic
applications. Dr. Hilbers has much esteem for it in summer
diarrhea accompanied by severe colic; and Dr. Phillips has
the following paragraph:- “" Malgaigne and Betz found the
use of very small doses (about 4 -grain in twenty -four hours)
to be exceedingly valuable for dysentery, especially in young
persons — an apparently paradoxical fact, but established on
good evidence,and, after all, not more strange than the com
pletely opposite action of small and large doses of Strychnia,
and of many other drugs .”
Dr. Hilbers gives the second dilution .
The medicine we have next to discuss is one of the most
372 GELSEMINUM .

valuable of the American contributions to the Materia

Medica. It is the yellow jessamine,
Gelseminum .
The tincture of the root is the preparation used in our
practice.
The article in the second edition of Dr. Hale's New Reme
dies is so exhaustive an account of the virtues of the drug
that you need not go any farther to possess yourself of all
available knowledge regarding it. It contains records of the
experiments of six provers .
The physiological effects of full doses of Gelseminum are
almost identical with those we have lately studied as result
ing from the action of Conium . The first symptom is heavi
ness of the eyelids, so that the eyes can hardly be kept open ;
with this there is giddiness on standing. Then ensues
diplopia ; and shortly afterwards the legs, arms, and lower
jaw become powerless, and the patient cannot stand, move, or
speak. Here are two illustrations of its action.
“ To see what the effects of the drug would be when pushed, I gave to
a patient, a sailor, convalescent from periostitis, three doses of 20 minims
each-two hours intervening between the first two doses, and one hour
between the second and third . The first dose (probably from being given
soon after a meal) produced but little if any effect. About half an hour
after the second dose, the usual complaint was made of difficulty of keep
ing the eyes open, from the heaviness of the lids. He saw things double,
one image appearing beside the other. During this time the pulse did not
appear to be much affected , remaining at 77 ; but after the third dose it
became quickened, from 80 at 8.15 to 96 at 9 p.m. At 7 p.m. (about two
hours after taking the third dose) he got out of bed to go to the lavatory,
being perfectly conscious. He reached the lavatory, but found himself
then powerless and quietly sunk first on his knees and then at full length.
He was quite unable to raise his lids. His lower jaw dropped, and he did
not articulate. The pulse, 15' previously (viz. 6.15), is marked as being 80),
and the same at 8.15-no registration being given of its actual value at
the time of the failure of power. The patient was put into bed and some
warm stimulating drink given to him, when he soon became better. He
told me when I saw him , with the most open -eyed simplicity, that the
 GELSEMINUM . 373

medicine had done him a deal of good, that he could make water very
much better since he had had it--(I should observe that he previously had
suffered from the effects of a troublesome stricture )—that he knew every
thing that was going on around him when he sunk to the ground , but
that he was unable to move, and that his feelings were like those which he
had experienced after commencement of intoxication ."
The second case is one of accidental poisoning. These
were the symptoms : - “ Complete loss of muscular power ;
was unable to move a limb, or even to raise his eyelids,
although he could hear and was cognisant of circumstances
transpiring around him. His friends, greatly alarmed, col
lected around him, watching the result with much anxiety,
and expecting every minute to see him breathe his last.
After some hours he gradually recovered .”
It is not easy to determine how Gelseminum produces this
action, whether through the nerves, like Conium and Curare,
or, like the Upas antiar, by direct action on the muscular sub
stance. Investigations on animals poisoned by the drug can
alone solve this question . The only ones with which I am
acquainted are those of Dr. Bartholow , recorded in the fifth
volume of the Practitioner. So far as they go, they make the
cranio -spinal axis the seat of the action of the drug. I am
much inclined to think that post-mortem examination would
disclose great passive congestion of the nervous centres. It
is with phenomena of this kind in the brain itself that fatal
cases of poisoning perish ; and the oppression and pain in
head and limbs suffered by the provers bespeak a similar con.
dition. This, however, is an extreme or late action of the
drug ; the loss of muscular activity so rapidly caused by it
and so rapidly departing must be what we call “ functional”
only. To those, accordingly, to whom “ contraria contrariis
curantur " seems an axiom , Gelseminum at once suggests
itself as a remedy for muscular cramp and spasm ; and with
out doubt there are certain ephemeral conditions of this kind
in which we may, with advantage, avail ourselves of the anti
pathic action of the drug. Thus it has effected speedy
i
374 GELSEMINUU .

relaxation of hysterical trismus, of laryngismus stridulus, and

of rigidity of the os uteri during parturition . I have myself
the highest opinion of its efficacy in relieving simple dys
menorrhoea and after- pains, both of which I suppose to be
essentially spasmodic in their nature. But for spasm of any
long standing or frequent occurrence , we should greatly
prefer a homeopathically acting remedy ; and, on the other
hand , should prescribe Gelseminum rather in paralysis. The
enuresis of old persons, from weakness of the sphincter
vesicæ, and the post-diphtheritic paralysis of the parts about
the throat and of the eyes and body generally, have yielded to
its use. These correspond to its functional action ; but it
also proves extremely serviceable when its congestive pheno
mena manifest themselves in the nervous centres. The
hyperemia is venous rather than arterial. I have seen
striking results from it in two cases of spinal congestion , in
one of which there was also incipient aphasia . It has been
used with good effect in epidemic cerebro -spinal meningitis
in America . The following case of Dr. Madden's illustrates
the kind of headache for which it is serviceable :
“ A gentleman had constant, gradually increasing headache
for three or four months ; dull , heavy pain, extending to the
nape of the neck, frequent throbbing in the temples, and
vertigo on rapid movement. I gave Gelseminum, a drop of
the mother-tincture night and morning. For thirty -six
hours the headache markedly increased after each dose ; then
a sudden throb like a snap took place in the centre of his
head. The headache at once and entirely ceased, and has not
since returned."
I have mentioned the speedy paralysing effect of Gelseminum
on the third nerve, causing ptosis and diplopia. Defective
power of accommodation was experienced by the provers ;
and the subjects of full intoxication with the drug speak of
being blind. As there is no other evidence of any anæsthetic
power possessed by Gelseminum , I think we must ascribe its
blindness to congestion . It has removed the amaurosis
 GELSEMINUM . 375

caused by Quinine, which is of this nature ; and, while

vying with Conium in any simple paralysis of the ocular
muscles, would go beyond it when affections of deeper parts
were the cause of the loss of power.
Another important action of Gelseminum is in the sphere
of the circulation . In persons sensitive to its influence
Dr. Douglass, its original prover, states that he has repeatedly
seen it produce a decided febrile chill with subsequent re
action . It is thus on the homeopathic principle that it
prevails as a febrifuge, of which it is one of the most potent.
It is not in the acute fever of Aconite, with its agonized
restlessness and burning thirst, nor in the delirious heat with
dry tongue of Baptisia and Belladonna, that Gelseminum
proves beneficial. Its fever is much less active ; the pulse is
not very rapid, and inclines to be full and soft ; the tongue
has a moist white fur. The main symptomis are those of
oppression, with dull pains in head, back, and limbs. Such a
fever is no uncommon effect of aa chill, and sometimes presents
itself in connection with the exanthemata. Whenever you
meet with it, give Gelseminum in place of Aconite, and you
will have every reason to be satisfied with it. From clinical
observations, moreover, I am disposed to consider the remittent
type of fever as that to which Gelseminum is specifically
applicable. Whether this would hold good with malarial
remittents, I cannot say ; but Gelseminum is one of the many
medicines which have repute in the treatment of ague. I
have especially in my mind the remittent fever of childhood,
for which, on the recommendation of Dr. Ludlam , I have
used Gelseminum instead of Aconite for the last ten years.
I know that it is now denied that the “ infantile remittent "
is a pathological entity. Still, whatever it may be, it is a
clinical reality ; and it is a great thing to have a remedy
which breaks it up as surely as Baptisia does with gastric and
Aconite with synochal fever. This Gelseminum effects; and
wherever such type of fever manifests itself, having marked
exacerbation towards night, and decline of the heat without
376 GLONOIN .

perspiration towards morning, the medicine may be given with

sure benefit.
These are the leading forms of disorder in which Gelseminum
plays a curative part. Other indications for it may be derived
from aa study of Dr. Hale's article, which shows it likely to
be serviceable (among other things) in nasal and Eustachian
catarrh .
The nearest analogue of Gelseminum is, as I have said,
Conium . As an antipyretic it is allied to Baptisia .
The first dilution is that which I have always given for
remittent fever. The second and higher potencies have been
used in paralytic and amaurotic affections, and for antipathic
purposes small doses of the mother-tincture.

Glonoin

is the substance commonly known as nitro-glycerine, and

valued for its explosive properties. It is the result of a
mixture of glycerine with nitric and sulphuric acids, at an ice
cold temperature. The name Glonoin was formed by its intro
ducer into medical practice, Dr. C. Hering, out of the
chemical formula (GIO NOS) denoting its composition .
Dr. Hering proved Glonoin on himself and others in
1848 , and the experiments were published in the following
year. In 1853 Dr. Dudgeon instituted some further provings
in this country , the record of which may be read in the eleventh
volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. An exhaustive
collection of the symptoms thus obtained and of the cures
effected by the drug may be found in Hering's Amerikanische
Arzneiprufungen, and is translated in the New England Medical
Gazette for 1874-5 .
The action of Glonoin lies within a very small compass.
If any one will touch his tongue with a five -per -cent. solution,
he will pretty certainly find in a few minutes that his pulse
has increased by twenty, forty, or even sixty beats. He may
 GLONOIN . 377

feel a sense of throbbing all over his body, but will almost
always experience it in the head, which will go on beating
until a pretty violent bursting headache has developed itself.
With this there will probably be some giddiness, a sense of
fulness in the head and at the heart, and of constriction about
the throat. If he is sensitive to its action, nausea and
vomiting may supervene, faintness may be felt, and even com
plete insensibility may ensue. Let me read you, in illustra
tion, the record of one of Dr. Dudgeon's provers.
“ In good health ; pulse 60. At 9 a.m. took one drop of
Glonoin , 1st dec., on a piece of sugar. In about half a minute
perceived a throbbing of the temporal arteries, soon accom
panied by a rather severe throbbing pain in both temples. In
a few seconds more the pulse was found increased from 60 to
100, and the heart throbbing most violently and rapidly . In
a minute or two a faint, warm, sickening sensation was per
ceived in the chest and stomach , resembling the threatenings of
sea -sickness ; also slight giddiness, especially on moving about.
The throbbing pain in the temples continued to increase for
about ten or fifteen minutes, then gradually diminished, and
in about half an hour became considerably easier ; thefeelings
of nausea and giddiness also were lessened ; but on returning
upstairs very fast, about three quarters of an hour after taking
the medicine, all the symptoms recurred with double force.
The temples ached and throbbed excessively, and there was
great nausea and giddiness. However, in a few minutes,
there was an abatement of these sensations, but leaving slight
nausea and throbbing pain in the temples.
“ A supper of oysters and stout, at half-past ten, removed
the nausea ; but the pain in the temples continued, and was
very readily aggravated by any exertion of walking, talking,
or reading. Went to bed at twelve ; had less pain in the
recumbent posture, especially when lying on either side ;
slept well all night. On waking in the morning, felt slight
pain, or rather uneasiness, in the temples, with tendency to
nausea and giddiness, which have continued all day. Feel
378 GLONOIN .

fulness of the temples, and very slight nausea, whilst now

writing at 8 p.m.”
What is the rationale of these striking symptoms? The
sudden increase in the frequency of the heart's action may
be caused either by direct stimulation of its substance or
ganglionic nerves , or by depression of the influence of the
vagi. The rapidity with which it supervenes, and the lack of
tension in the pulse, lead one to ascribe it to the latter mode
of action. On what, then , depend the head symptoms ? At
first sight they would seem secondary to the increased action
of the heart. But this theory is excluded by the fact that in
one of Dr. Dudgeon's provers the head was not affected at
all, although the pulse rose very high indeed . We need a
special action on the arteries themselves to account for the
cerebral phenomena present. And for this we have only to
suppose that Glonoin affects the neighbouring vaso-motor
centre in the same manner as that of the pneumogastrics.
The same sedative influence would then, through the inhibi
tory fibres of the vagi, set the heart off palpitating, and
through the vascular nerves would dilate the arteries. In
confirmation of this view, we often find the provers describing
the sense of throbbing as felt all over the body, though
especially in the head.
All this forcibly reminds us of Amyl nitrite, whose action
we lately studied. But a little attention will show that the
effects of the two drugs are not identical. Amyl causes a
general flushing, without marked sense of throbbing or special
localisation in the head ; nor is the pulse much affected by
it. Glonoin differs from it in all these points. Accordingly,
it has been demonstrated that Amyl produces its dilating
effects on the arteries by directly paralysing their muscular
coats, and acts similarly on other muscular parts ; while
Glonoin affects the nervous centres of the circulation, and is
limited to this sphere.
It is clear that, if the homeopathic principle is worth any.
thing at all, Glonoin ought to be a remedy for some active
 GLONOIN . 379

disturbances of the cerebral circulation . It would not act, as

Belladonna does, upon such congestive states as depend on
irritation of the brain substance, and tend to inflammation .
With Belladonna the circulation within the cranium is excited
because the brain is irritated ; with Glonoin the brain is
irritated because the circulation is excited. But it would be
indicated in such hyperæmiæ as can be produced by excessive
heat or cold, by strong emotions, by mechanical jarring, by
suppression of the menses or other hæmorrhages and excre
tions. The first and last of these causes come most frequently
before us in connection with the drug, and demand special
notice .
1. The cerebral hyperæmia of excessive heat is, in its full
development, sun -stroke. For this casualty Glonoin has
many a time proved a rapid and efficient remedy. It is not
a malady often seen in this country ; but I have obtained
striking benefit from the drug in its distressing after-effects.
In minor degrees of the same trouble, in headaches
brought on or aggravated by hot sunshine, and in those
which occur
in workers by gaslight, Glonoin is very
effectual.
2. Perhaps the greatest boon which Dr. Hering has con
ferred upon patients in introducing Glonoin to medicine is
the relief it gives to menstrual disturbances of the cerebral
circulation . Every one knows the intense congestion of the
brain induced in plethoric constitutions by sudden sup
pression of the menses . Glonoin is an exquisite simillimum
here; for in one of Dr. Dudgeon's provers, who took it
while the catamenia were present, these immediately ceased,
and the headache went on increasing in violence till night.
Glonoin is recommended by all in this condition, and there
are cases on record illustrating its virtues. It is of course no
less useful in minor degrees of the same condition. While
thus helping the weaker sex during their menstrual life, it
becomes especially serviceable as this draws to its close. It
does not act, like Lachesis or Amyl nitrite, on the general
380 GLONOIN .

flushings of the climacteric epoch ; but it is most valuable

when these are localised in the head . It was from a sug
gestion of Dr. Kidd's that I first began to use Glonoin for
this common trouble, and I have since learned to place the
utmost confidence in it. It is also very useful in the con
gestive conditions of pregnancy.
The consideration of the cerebral hyperæmia thus caused
has illustrated the form of the disorder in which Glonoin is
indicated . But we are of course not limited to such or
similar origins in our applications of the drug. Whenever
we see fulness of the head with throbbing of the arteries
present, and are not led to Aconite or Belladonna (or their
congeners ) by fever or inflammation, we should think of
Glonoin. It thus becomes a frequent remedy for headache.
It was the statement of its discoverer, Sobrero, that “ even a
very small quantity placed on the tongue causes a violent
headache of several hours' duration," which led Dr. Hering
to investigate its action . The kind of headache it produces
has been already illustrated. Fulness, tension, throbbing,
bursting — these are the phrases used by the provers to
describe it ; one of them felt as if he were hanging with the
head downwards, and as if there was a great rush of blood
thereinto in consequence. When headaches so characterised
come before us we may look for the best effects from Glonoin.
Dr. Coxe, of Philadelphia , bas communicated some excellent
illustrative cases, which may be read in Dr. Dudgeon's paper.
The medicine is seen to act as rapidly in disease as in health,
for in from five to twenty minutes all distress bad ceased.
As regards conditions, the Glonoin headache is increased by
shaking the head or moving the body , and relieved by er.
ternal pressure. In those more serious forms of cerebral
hyperæmia which we call puerperal convulsions and apoplery
the place of Glonoin has hardly been determined . In the
former there is much more than congestion of the head to be
thought of : still , Glonoin may be and has been useful in
:

relieving that part of the disorder. For the simple determi

 GRAPHITES . 381

nation of blood to the head which sometimes precedes

apoplexy Kafka says it is very effectual, and also for that
which often occurs in softening and tumours of the brain .
In what has now come before us we see the main sphere
of the action of Glonoin, and the kind and conditions of
the same. The only other obvious application to practice
of its pathogenetic effects was to use it for some forms of
palpitation, which has been done with success. But Glonoin
has had a short episode of allopathic history. In 1858 its
powers became accidentally known to my friend Mr. Field,
then practising as a surgeon in Brighton, who communicated
it to his brethren in the pages of the Medical Times and
Gazette. Some contradictory experimentation followed ; but
on the whole the effects of Glonoin were admitted to
be identical with those observed by the homeopathic
provers. It was not of course to be expected that the drug
should be used therapeutically on our principle : it was given
rather as a sedative.” In this capacity it manifested in
many hands a striking power of relieving paroxyms of
neuralgia ; and we have occasionally availed ourselves of its
power in this direction. Whether it has any specific action
in neuralgia I cannot say : but certainly cases have been
relieved by the third attenuation, and some permanently
cured .
I have already compared Glonoin with Amyl nitrite.
Hamamelis (q. v.) has once at least acted like it on the
head .
It has proved beneficial in all dilutions from the 3rd
decimal to the 12th centesimal . The first and second decimal
have been used , but are liable to aggravate.

Graphites
is plumbago, the black - lead of our pencils, in which form
Hahnemann proved it, and the British Homeopathic Phar
macopeia directs it to be used. It is understood to be an .
382 GRAPHITES .

allotropic form of carbon, with some small admixture of iron

and silica. It is prepared by trituration .
A pathogenesis of Graphites appeared in the first edition of
the Chronic Diseases, containing 590 symptoms. It was then
proved by Nenning on several persons, and by Hartlaub. In
the second edition of the Chronic Diseases Hahnemann in .
corporated the 200 symptoms thus obtained, and added a few
from Rummel and Kretchmar and a number from his own
observation , raising the total to 1144 .
In his preface he tells us that a German physician, Wein
hold, when travelling in Italy, found black -lead used by the
workmen in a mirror manufactory as an external application
for herpes . He himself adopted the practice, giving the sub
stance internally also ; and wrote a book to record his
success . Hahnemann was led to include Graphites among
his “ anti-psoric ” medicines ; and its use in cutaneous
disease, long obsolete in the old school, flourishes among
homeopathists to this day. Dr. Hale has recently reported
a remarkable case of eczema impetiginodes, of twenty years'
standing, cured by it in the dilutions from the 5th to the
30th ;* and Bähr gives three cases of that troublesome dis
ease, mentagra, in which it proved radically curative. I
mention these, as easily accessible illustrations of its efficacy ;
but if you hunt through homeopathic literature you will
find numerous testimonies and narrations to the same effect.
Dr. Bayes commends it in psoriasis palmaris ; and suggests
that the frequent occurrence of this complaint in domestic
servants may have something to do with the black -lead used
by them for fire -grates.
It is not easy to define the precise place of Graphites in
skin disease. The presence of rhagades generally suggests it
to me. Dr. Guernsey says that its characteristic symptom
here is the exudation of a thin , sticky, glutinous, transparent
fluid from raw places or sores.. It probably exerts, like
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 353.
 GRAPHITES . 383

Arsenic, a general influence upon the nutrition of the skin, which

may lead to varying effects, pathogenetic and curative, accord
ing to the subjects of its influence.
Graphites is also very useful in unhealthy states of the
appendages and prolongations of the skin. Dr. Guernsey
commends it for falling of the hair and abnormal growth of
the nails. He also speaks well of it in tinnitus aurium , with
deafness which is improved by external noise. Such an
affection is probably due to a morbid state of the meatus or
membrana tympani. Dr. Cooper uses it successfully in
blepharitis ciliaris , where inflammatory symptoms are absent ;
also in stillicidium lachrymarum , from obstruction of the
nasal duct . Dr. Bayes ranks it with Aurum in crusts about
the nostrils in scrofulous children . Dr. Marston has left on
record a cure of fissure of the anus by it.
Beyond the cutaneous region, the best-established action of
Graphites is on the ovaries and testes. Hahnemann himself
recommended it for delayed menstruation , especially when
accompanied with great costiveness. I should mention, by
the way, that for constipation itself Graphites is one of our
main remedies: the stools are large and knotty, requiring much
straining for their expulsion. This use of the drug in catame
nial deficiency has become established among homeopathists ;
and Dr. Dudgeon has lately given us an interesting account
of the disappearance of indurated enlargement of the ovaries
themselves under its employment.* In their male analogues,
the testes, Graphites has more than once proved curative of
hydrocele.
Graphites has lately been selected as the subject for the
prize-essay of the Central Homeopathic Society of Germany,
- the source from which we have had Reil on Aconite, Bähr
on Digitalis, and Sorge on Phosphorus. The successful
essayist on this occasion is Dr. H. Goullon. I have not yet
been able to get access to his work ; but from some extracts
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxi, 183.
 381 GRATIOLA .

from it translated in the North American Journal of Homoeopathy

it appears to be so complete a collection of clinical experience
with the drug, that it can hardly fail to enlarge our knowledge
of its use .
Graphites may be compared in its respective spheres with
Pulsatilla ; with Arsenic ; and with Alumina and Plumbum.
It appears to act almost equally well in substance and
dilution,-from Weinhold's twelve- grain doses to the lower
triturations employed by Bähr, Cooper, and Marston, and
thence to the twelfth dilution of Dudgeon, Hale, and homæo
pathists generally.
I have now to speak of
Gratiola .
This is the Gratiola officinalis,the common “ hedge-hyssop.”
The homeopathic tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
in the usual manner .
A pathogenesis of Gratiola appears in the Arzneimittellehre
of Hartlaub and Trinks . Of its 604 symptoms, 72 are
warranted by Trinks himself, and 10 are taken from authors.
The remainder have the somewhat dubious guarantee of
• Ng." But, in addition to this, we have some excellent
provings of the drug in full doses, which have been translated
by Dr. de Moor in the third volume of the Révue de la
Matière Médicale Spécifique ; where also will be found the
history of its previous uses.
The general knowledge about the physiological action of
Gratiola is summed up by Pereira in saying that it “ is
cathartic, emetic, and diuretic, acting in large doses as an
'acrid poison .” Its dynamic action appears limited and
uncertain . Some provers took gtt. xx–1 of the tincture,
and gr. x-xx of the dried plant, without appreciable disturb
ance of health . The few genuine and frequently recurring
effects of the drug seem worth noting here, as so little_is
known about it. They are
 GRATIOLA . 385

1. Determination of blood to the head, with heat and

somnolence.
2. Sense of coldness on the vertex, changing to heat.
3. Pain in the occiput on early waking, relieved by rising
or lying prone .
4. Sensation in the face as if it were swollen .
5. Objects, even green ones, appear white (after S. 1) .
6. Every morning for weeks swelling of the upper lip,
disappearing after a few hours .
7. Teeth ache from cold .
8. Great distension of the stomach after meals .
9. Great somnolence and lassitude after meals,
10. “Pressure at the pit of the stomach, as from a stone
rolling from side to side, with cramp-like drawing which
mounts into the chest ; at the same time frequent urgings to
vomit and eructations ; this condition lasts several days,
and is always worse after taking food [ four days after]”
( Trinks).
11. Constriction of anus.
12. Itching at anus .
13. Great rectal and anal irritation, with passage of fætid
mucus.*

14. Burning in urethra after urinating.

I have only to add a quotation from Taylor (p. 515) . “ A
series of cases observed by M. Bouvier are reported by Orfila,
in four of which the plant was used, under the form of a
decoction, as an enema. The result was that in one instance
violent vomiting and purging, with syncope, was induced, and
in all aa strong attack of nymphomania. In other cases there
was constriction of the throat, with hydrophobic symptoms
and convulsions.” +

* In animals poisoned by Gratiola, Orfila occasionally found the rectum

inflamed, even when the drug had not been introduced into the alimentary
canal.
† Referring to the original, I find that in one of the cases the nympho
mania was permanent. The last sentence is (not very correctly) based on
25
386 GUAIACUM .

Gratiola, employed in the past to remove “ visceral ob

structions,” and so relieve mental diseases, dropsies, &c., has
fallen into disuse in the common practice ; nor has it yet
found any defined place in homeopathic therapeutics. It is
unmentioned by Hempel, Bayes, Guernsey, and Espanet.
Teste only seems to have some practical acquaintance with it.
He says— “ Gratiola will be found particularly useful in cases
bordering upon such as would, by their symptoms, unequi
vocally point to Chamomilla. Gratiola would seem to be to
chronic affections what Chamomilla is to acute . In nervous
diseases for example ( such as mania, nymphomania, delirium
tremens, &c.), and in neuralgic affections caused by the pro
longed abuse of coffee, Gratiola often renders good service.
I have often given it after Causticum ; this seems to be its
antidote.”
As to dose, it can only be said that less than twenty drops
of the tincture failed ordinarily to affect the system .
My last medicine to - day is one not unfamiliar to you,
Guaiacum .
Our tincture is a solution of the gum-resin.
The proving of Guaiacum appeared in the fourth volume
of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, where it has 29 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 113 from three fellow -observers, and 3 from
authors. Guaiacum appears also as an antipsoric in the
second edition of the Chronic Diseases ; but only 15 additional
symptoms are credited to it.
I can only refer you to the list of symptoms given by
Hahnemann in these records. There is little in them of a
significant character. So far as they go, however, they make
it probable that Guaiacum is homeopathic to some of those
rheumatic and gouty pains for which it has so long been
the following of Orfila :—“ In a fifth case, there was added to the fureur
utérine a spasmodic constriction of the throat, with hydrophobia, conval.
sions , and death in two days.”
 GUAIACUM . 387

employed . Dr. Phillips likewise, summing up the effect of

large doses, says _ -“ Stiffness, of a rheumatic character, is
felt in the nape of the neck and the small of the back, with
pains in the bones of the legs, the limbs feeling as if swelled ;
darting pains, apparently of a rheumatic neuralgic character,
extend also from the feet to the knees." Hahnemann recom
mends it in “ gouty lancinating pains in the limbs, especially
in contractions produced by tearing, shooting pains in the
limbs, the pains being excited by the slightest motion and
accompanied by heat in the affected parts, especially when the
patient had been injured by the abuse of Mercury.
We are here reminded of the quondam repute of the decoc
tion of the Guaiacum wood in syphilis, which gave it the
name of “lignum vitæ .” It is quite discredited now ; and
probably Hahnemann hit the nail on the head when he cited
the ancient saying, “ Luis venereæ mercurius antidotum , mercurii
guaiacum .”
Of late there has appeared some evidence that Guaiacum
specifically affects the throat. It has been recommended by
some writers as abortive of quinsy ; and one of our American
colleagues speaks highly of it in diphtheria. It is a medicine
deserving, I think, of further investigation.
The mother -tincture, which Hahnemann recommends, will
probably have to be given in most cases. In diphtheria it is
best administered in warm milk.
 LECTURE XXII .

HAMAMELIS , HELLEBORUS, HELONIAS, HEPAR SULPHURIS .

Our first medicine to -day is another precious contribution

from America to our remedial store, the witch-hazel ,

Hamamelis Virginica.
We prepare a tincture from the bark and leaves.
A proving of Hamamelis conducted by fourteen persons,
mainly with the attenuations, was presented to the American
Institute of Homeopathy at its meeting in 1874 by Dr.
Wallace McGeorge, and is published in its Transactions
for that year. All other knowledge of the pathogenetic and
curative effects of the drug is collated by Dr. Hale in the
article upon
it in his New Remedies. Let me say here that,
since we last met, a fourth edition of that work has appeared.
It is published in two parts, the first containing the “ Sym
1
ptomatology, " the second the “ Therapeutics ” of the medicines
presented. My references for the curative powers of the
indigenous American remedies will henceforth be made to
the latter volume . But as the former does not give the
provings in detail, we shall still have to go back for these to
the second edition .
Hamamelis has long had a popular reputation in America,
and is the basis of a patent medicine known as “ Pond's
Extract,” which is largely used as an anodyne application to
injuries. Dr. Hering, being in attendance on the proprietor
of this preparation, was led to test its real virtues. Dr. Okie
did the same, and reported his results in a letter to Dr.
26
390 HAMAMELIS VIRGINICA .

Hering published in 1853. Dr. Preston had already, in 1851,

proved the drug on himself, and found it cause marked
determination of blood to the head and chest, with epistaxis.
The latter symptom was observed upon another, and metror
rhagia in two female subjects.
Dr. Preston was naturally led to use Hamamelis as a
remedy for hæmorrhages. But he found it to be no less
efficacious in affections of the vessels from which the blood
proceeded. It had already been commended for piles : he
now used it, internally and externally, for varicosis of the
legs. Its next application was to phlebitis, and here also it
succeeded excellently well. He was thus led to consider the
drug as acting specifically upon the venous system , and, in a
series of papers in the North American Journal of Homoeopathy
(1853) , developed and illustrated this doctrine. Dr. Ringer,
who vouches for the remedy, does well in putting Dr.
Preston's name forward as the chief authority for its
virtues.
The three leading forms of venous disorder are phlebitis,
varicosis, and hæmorrhage.
1. In simple phlebitis you can hardly put too much con
fidence in Hamamelis. It acts even better than Pulsatilla,
which has great virtue here. Dr. Preston commends it for
phlegmasia alba dolens ; but I think that it will often cause
disappointment there. The lymphatics are, I take it, more
frequently at fault than the veins in that disease.
2. In the various forms of varicosis Hamamelis is the
prince of remedies. In varicose veins of the leg you will be
delighted with the way in which the first or second dilution
will ease the pain, while the external application of the diluted
tincture will cause the dilated vessels to shrink up. Varicose
ulcer of the leg may be healed by similar treatment ; to which
also varicocele and circocele have often yielded. It is good
for varicosis of the throat, where the parts look bluish from
distended veins, and there is more or less discomfort, with
pain on swallowing, and hawking of mucus with blood. Such
 HAMAMELIS VIRGINICA . 391

a throat is often seen in gouty subjects. But it is in this

same condition at the other end of the digestive tube, viz. in
hæmorrhoids, that Hamamelis has won its greatest triumphs.
I have cured case after case of “ bleeding piles” by the
internal use of this medicine ; and indeed can safely say that
in an experience of it dating more than twelve years back I
have never failed with it. Numerous testimonies to the same
effect are to be found in Dr. Hale's article ; and we can now
add to them that of Dr. Ringer, who says that he has found
it singularly successful and prompt in arresting bleeding from
this source , even when excessive and amounting to half-a -pint
a day, repeated almost daily for months or years. It not
only checks the bleeding, which by itself might not always
seem beneficial; but does so in the only way in which &
homeopathic remedy can act, namely, by removing the proxi
mate cause. Even where there is not much bleeding Hamamelis
will cure piles, if they are a local manifestation of a general
tendency to varicosis.
3. We are thus led to the use of Hamamelis in hæmor
rhages generally, for which mischance it is perhaps more
frequently indicated than any other remedy. The general
evidence of those who have used it agrees with that of Dr.
Preston, that it is in venous hæmorrhages, where the blood
flows steadily and without expulsive effort, that Hamamelis is
likely to cure. I have myself also suggested* that it is more
suitable when the state of the vessels leads to the hæmorrhage
than where this is dependent upon altered composition of the
blood itself .If this canon be true, it defines the place of
Hamamelis in purpura. There are many cases on record
showing its efficacy ; I have myself seen one : but I think
that in all the vessels and not the blood itself were at fault.
Dr. Ringer speaks of being disappointed with it in epistaxis
occurring in a lad with the hæmorrhagic diathesis ; where,
perhaps, the same explanation will hold good. Otherwise,
this form of bleeding is remarkably under its control, as also
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii , 256.
.
392 HAMAMELIS VIRGINICA .

are hæmatemesis, melæna, and hæmoptysis of passive and

venous type. Dr. Ringer has known it arrest hæmaturia
in four cases which had resisted many other remedies, and to
check the oozing of blood which sometimes goes on for weeks
after delivery. Dr. Dyce Brown finds it very successful in
uterine hæmorrhage generally .* It has also cured vicarious
menstruation , and helped much in the treatment of dysentery.
I have myself used it in most of these affections, and have so
much confidence in its power that I would never be without
it in my pocket -case.
If you ask me what is the rationale of this hæmostatic
power of Hamamelis and other medicines of ours, I can only
answer that it is but an instance of the general homeopathic
principle. They cure hæmorrhages because they cause them .
Hamamelis certainly does not owe its virtues to the tannin
which, like many other barks, it contains; for it acts well as
high as the second and third dilutions, whose very infini
tesimal proportion of tannin could hardly prove astringent.
The only other sphere of action in which we know Hama
melis to be capable of vigorous work is that of the generative
organs. Its potent pathogenetic influence on these, in the
male subject, was first brought to light by that indefatigable
prover, Dr. Burt. He experimented on himself with the drug
in 1864 (as you may read in the twenty -third volume of the
British Journal of Homeopathy ), and suffered severely from
neuralgic pains in the testicles, which—when strong doses
were taken — were so intense as to compel him to discontinue
the proving. Sometimes the pains migrated suddenly to the
stomach, causing nausea and faintness. They were accom
panied with frequent emissions, and much hypochondriac
depression and irritability. The latter symptom was very
marked in Dr. McGeorge's provers.
Dr. Okie had already used it successfully in ovaritis ; and
Dr. Burt gives three cases of what he calls “ ovarian neur
algia " cured by it. The first was probably of a subinflam .
* Monthly Homæopathic Review , xiv , 473.
 HAMAMELIS VIRGINICA . 393

matory nature : the second and third may have been pure
neuroses. But the most important testimony to the value of
the medicine in ovarian affections is that of Dr. Ludlam .
I quote from the second edition of his excellent Lectures,
clinical and didactic, on the Diseases of Women (p. 138) .
“ During the summer term of lectures for the year 1864, I
called attention to the efficacy of the hamamelis virginica in
ovaritis. The remarkable effects of this remedy, locally and
internally, in orchitis led me to infer that it would also be
useful in some forms of ovaritis. I have prescribed it in
numerous cases with remarkable results. It seems appro
priate to the subacute attacks of this disease which are
incident to pregnancy and menstruation. In the former case,
I have no question of its power, in some instances, to prevent
abortion, where such a mishap threatens in consequence of
ovarian irritation and inflammation . In the latter, it allays
the pain and averts the menstrual derangement which is so
liable to follow . It is also useful in gonorrheal ovaritis, in
which variety the suffering is sometimes extreme. This affec
tion bears a close analogy to the gonorrheal orchitis of the
male, in which Hamamelis is almost specific.” In this last
affection Dr. Franklin also, in his Science and Art of Surgery,
commends it. It probably has a similar action on the whole
genito-urinary apparatus. Dr. Payne, an “ eclectic” prac
titioner in America, states that in large doses it causes in
women violent contractions of the vagina, and a smarting,
burning sensation , followed by pruritus : in men he has known
it produce irritation of the urethra, and a discharge, with
ardor urinæ . With apparently unconscious homeopathicity
he recommends it for the cure of these very conditions. It
ought to be useful for gonorrhea occurring in the female.
Dr. McGeorge, in the clinical observations he adds to his
provings, speaks warmly of its power, when applied locally,to
give permanent relief to vaginismus. It is also attaining a
good deal of reputation in dysmenorrhæa (especially, Dr. Pat
tison says, in the form of Hamamelin) : it is probably
 394 HELLEBORUS NIGER.

where this trouble depends upon ovarian irritation that it is

beneficial.
There are several points about the action of Hamamelis
which lead me to think it likely to prove a useful remedy in
gout ; but I must reserve this part of the subject until I have
been able to develope and test it further.
The only true analogue to Hamamelis is Pulsatilla .
I have generally used the first decimal in acute hæmor
shage ; the first and second centesimal in other cases .
Our next medicine to -day is the Christmas rose ,
Helleborus niger,
of which we prepare a tincture from the fresh root.
The proving is in the third volume of the Reine Arzneimit.
tellehre, and contains 92 symptoms from Hahnemann, 162 from
eight fellow -observers, and 34 from authors. The latter
describe mainly the drastic properties of the plant. The
provings do not seem to have been very heroic, judging from
a letter of Hahnemann's to Stapf, cited by Dudgeon ( Lectures,
p. 189) , in which an eighth of a drop of the tincture is ordered
to be taken every hour or two until some violent effects are
experienced.
It was either the black Hellebore, or some closely allied
species, which was used by the Greek physicians for the treat
ment of mental disorders. They supposed it to act by its
evacuant properties ; but it is probable that it had some
specific influence. Hahnemann makes the following remark
in point: " I infer from various observations that stupor, an
obtusion of the sensitive nervous system — imperfect and heed
less sight, although the eyes are perfectly good , imperfect
hearing, although the organ of hearing is perfectly sound,
imperfect or no taste, although the organ of taste is in good
condition, constant or frequent absence of thought, want of
recollection of the things which had just taken place, indiffer
ence, light slumber without the sleep being refreshing, desire
 HELLEBORUS NIGER. 395

to work without having the power or attention necessary to do

anything — is a primary effect of Hellebore." Knorre has
reported a cure of melancholia following typhus by it, and
recommends it in the same condition occurring in girls at
puberty. * I should mention that the condition of brain found
post-mortem in the subject of S. 80 among Hahnemann's
* Observations of others" must not be supposed to have been
caused by Hellebore, as the man was a melancholic.
But the chief use of Hellebore is in the various forms of
dropsy. Hahnemann gives as one of his own observations
(S. 66 ), “ sudden dropsical swelling of the skin ;" and remarks
upon it— “ This symptom , with others belonging to the kid
neys, appears to show that Hellebore will be a great remedy
in certain dropsical affections." The renal symptoms referred
to are among those of his fellow -observers ,
S. 104. Abundant urination , without much urging (Lang
hammer ).
S. 105. Frequent urging to micturate, and scanty emission
( Ibid ).
S. 106. Emission of a quantity of watery urine (Stapf).

The opposite character of the first two, though occurring

in the same prover, is explained by the fact that the
scanty urine with urging was observed within the first four
hours after the dose, the abundant and free passage of the
secretion twenty - four hours after it. This precisely corre
sponds with later observations, which show that one of the
" glucosides ” of Helleborus - helleborein — is a diuretic to
animals, but causes hyperæmia of the kidneys. Thus the
primary effect of Hellebore would be to congest the renal
organs and diminish their secretion ; while, as the effect was
passing off, an opposite condition would obtain . Now this is
>

just what we have in post-scarlatinal dropsy, where the drug

has gained its chief laurels. There is a general consensus of
Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xii, 478.
 396 HELLEBORUS NIGER .

testimony to its value here, Dr. Bayes being the only one who
speaks of disappointment.
Hellebore is also occasionally used with benefit in other
dropsies, as in that left behind by intermittents, and in
the ascites of scrofulous children .* But the question of
main interest is as to what it can do in hydrocephalus.
Its other glucoside - helleborin - causes paralysis in animals;
and after death the cerebral meninges are found congested,
and the substance diminished in consistence and showing
extravasation . It would thus be homoeopathic to the
second stage of encephalitis ; while its power over serous
dropsies elsewhere might well extend to the cranial arach
noid, making it useful in such cerebral effusions as occur
from insolation, after typhus, or from the retrocession of
mumps or the exanthemata . In chronic hydrocephalus it
might well aid the constitutional remedies - Sulphur, Calcarea,
and such like-on which we mainly rely. All these are well
attested uses of the drug ; but whether it can help in true
tubercular meningitis is another question. It is recommended
for it, in the stage of effusion, by all the older homeopathic
writers; but those of later date seem to have less confidence
in it. I have tried it several times myself, in varying dilu
tions, but never with any benefit.
The only other sphere of action of Hellebore is the ovario
uterine. Pereira says that it stimulates the pelvic circulation
like Aloes, and is an emmenagogue . In the female animals
poisoned by Helleborein the mucous membrane of the uterus
was always found congested. It has some repute among
homeopathists in amenorrhea.
The medicines most allied to Helleborus are Apis, Apocynum,
Cantharis, and Kali bromidum .
The medium and higher dilutions have been those most
frequently used ; but Dr. Phillips states that he gets excellent
results in post-scarlatinal dropsy with ten or fifteen -drop
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom., x, 124.
 HELONIAS DIOICA . 397

doses of the tincture. I should say that I am indebted to his

book for the facts about the glucosides of the plant.
We have now once more to turn to America, which sends us
a medicine whose importance is growing upon us of late,
the

Helonias dioica .
A tincture is prepared from the root ; and the concentrated
preparation, Helonin, is triturated for our use .
A full account of Helonias is given by Dr. Hale in his New
Remedies . You will do well to supplement his remarks by
reading the excellent article on the drug by Dr. Samuel Jones
in the twenty -second volume of the North American Journal
of Homeopathy, who presents us also with a full schema of its
pathogenetic effects.
Dr. Jones is one of the two provers of Helonias. He took
three ounces of the mother tincture and a scruple of Helonin
in the course of a week, and noted the results at the time and
subsequently. It had been reported as beneficial in diabetes
and Bright's disease ; and he was desirous to ascertain whether
it would cause sugar or albumen to appear in the urine. He
found neither ; but he did get an excess of urea, to the extent
of aa sixth part of the normal amount. At the same time his
urine, which was apt to be alkaline, and to deposit amorphous
phosphates, became acid, even after a meal ; and the phos
phatic deposition ceased to be anything more than an excep
tional occurrence . During the time, and for twelve days
afterwards, he was weak and irritable, and full of aches and
pains. Then all these left him, and for a week he felt un
usually well. But, he writes, “ on the nineteenth day after
the last dose had been taken a profound depression of spirits.
supervened. I was filled with the most abject despair.” This
condition continued nearly two weeks ; and then, three
weeks later, he “ became ' bilious,' sleepy during the day, head
dull and stupid , poor appetite, food had no taste.” Hethinks
398 HELONIAS DIOICA .

that at this time an examination of the urine would have

shown aa minus of urea ; but, strangely enough, he omitted to
make it.
I have dwelt fully on these phenomena, as Helonias has
gained a considerable reputation as a “ tonic," and it is in
teresting and important to ascertain its action in health . I
cannot think that the “ bilious " condition occurring seven
weeks after omitting the drug had anything to do with it ;
but the depression of the fourth and fifth week seems fairly
traceable to its influence. Dr. Brown, the other prover of
Helonias, who took smaller doses, experienced the same feelings
from the fifth day of his proving. He says little of debility,
but nothing of increased strength ; and Dr. Jones was de
cidedly weakened by the drug, so that the healthy reaction
subsequently was keenly enjoyed . The changes in the urine
have hardly yet received their interpretation.
Helonias, accordingly, may fairly have its “ tonic " action
explained upon the principle of similarity; and, judging from
the cases Dr. Hale relates, it need not be given in large doses.
Its action is compared by all who have used it to that of iron.
It possibly acts on the blood -making processes, and
and may be
useful in chlorosis and anæmia where iron disagrees. I have
recently cured an exquisite case of chlorosis with it with
considerable rapidity. Dr. Jones (and also Dr. Carroll
Dunham ) speaks well of it in such mental depression as fol.
lows over-dosing with bromide of potassium ; and no less so
in post-diphtheritic debility.
The local actions of Helonias are on the kidneys and the
uterus. In the former pain and weight are experienced, and
a sensation of burning, as if the kidneys were two bags of hot
water ; there is also increased urination. The drug has not
been proved upon women ; but Dr. Clark, of Portland, states
that in six or eight female patients to whom Helonias had
been given in the first decimal dilution there occurred " pain
in the lower part of the back , through to the uterus, like in
flammation, piercing, drawing." The breasts also swelled,
 HELONIAS DIDICA. 399

and the nipples became sensitive and tender. Lastly, uterine

hæmorrhage set in, and continued till the medicine was given
up. Upon the male subject it has acted as an aphrodisiac.
Correspondingly , the chief use of Helonias has been in renal
and uterine affections. It is reported curative in phosphatic
urine, urinary irritation with impotence, diabetes, and albu
minuria : it reminds one here of Phosphoric acid. From its
power over affections of the womb it has obtained the appella
tion of “ uterine tonic." In prolapsus, menorrhagia, leucor
rhæa, and other atonic states of this organ — even when
causing sterility or tendency to miscarriage — it seems really
possessed of very great curative virtues. I can hardly claim
these uses of the medicine for homeopathy, as it is aa stimulant
rather than a depressant to both urinary and sexual organs.
Dr. Hale would have us believe in a secondary homeo
pathicity," arguing that all stimulation is followed by subse
quent relaxation ; so that Helonias is priruarily homeopathic
to renal or uterine irritation, and secondarily to atonic con
ditions of the same organs. But I must maintain that such
" secondary homeopathic" action is essentially antipathic ; and,
if really curative, only shows that contraria contrariis as well
as similia similibus plays a part in specific medication.
Dr. Jones thinks that the key -note of the subjective
symptoms of Helonias is " amelioration while doing some
6
thing.” “ The headache,” he says, “ disappears when the
attention is engaged. The pains vanish when one is busied.
The sense of profound debility is lost when exercising. When
one turns from the book and goes into a half reverie then
comes the headache. When one sits purposeless then come
the burning-aching pains. When one feels as if he could
scarcely drag one foot after the other he is astonished to find
that the sense of rest is gotten, not by lying on the couch, but
by walking."
I have already mentioned the analogy between the virtues
of Helonias and some of the effects of Phosphoric acid and
Ferrum . As a uterine remedy, it most resembles Stannum .
400 HEPAR SULPHURIS .

The mother tincture of Helonias, and the 1st decimal tri

turation of Helonin , have generally been used.
My last medicine to-day is one of the old Hahnemannian
stock, the calcic sulphide,

Hepar sulphuris.
It is prepared for homeopathic use by “ mixing equal parts of
finely -powdered clean oyster -shell and quite pure flowers of
sulphur, and keeping the mixture for ten minutes heated to a
white heat in a crucible hermetically closed." These are
Hahnemann's own directions ; and the resulting compound is
plainly a sulphide of calcium. The potencies are made by
trituration.
A pathogenesis of Hepar appears in the fourth volume of
Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 282 symptoms from Hah
nemann , 16 from two fellow -observers, and 10 from authors
of which 8 are effects of the sulphuretted waters of Neundorf
and Aachen . In the Chronic Diseases another pathogenesis
appears, in which the last-named symptoms are omitted, but
others are added by Hahnemann himself, raising the number
to 661 .
The term Hepar sulphuris— “ liver of sulphur” -appears to
have been given in old time especially to the sulphide of
potassium .. The virtues ascribed to this drug, however, so
closely correspond as far as they go with those of our own
calcareous compound that we may fairly use them in connection
with it. Again, since sulphuretted hydrogen is unmistakably
evolved when Hepar is brought into a state of solution, it
must share in the pathogenetic properties of that gas and
inherit its repute as a remedy. Lastly, being a compound of
the two great constitutional medicines, Sulphur and Calcarea,
itself becomes an agent of the same character, having points
of resemblance to each of its elements. Like Sulphur it
affects the skin, and like Calcarea the glands.
 HEPAR SULPHURIS . 401

But, like many other compounds, it is something over and

above its constituent parts ; and strikes out (so to speak) an
action of its own . I think that Hahnemann hit upon the
nature of this action when he recommended Hepar as a
dynamic antidote to the effects of Mercury. He made this
point in his treatise on syphilis published in 1788 ; and the
recommendation bas been so frequently acted on with success
that there seems little doubt of its being well founded The
process does not seem to be aa chemical one ; and the symptoms
induced by Hepar sufficiently resemble those of Mercury to
make it probable that the law of similars is at work here.
Hepar accordingly has affinities with Mercurius as well as with
Sulphur and Calcarea ; and its range of influence is conse
quently a wide one.
The most important application of Hepar resulting from
this analogy is its use in suppuration . The power of Mercury
to induce suppurative inflammation is well known ; and its
employment in inflammatory states of the organs it influences
whep matter threatens to form is as obvious as it is successful .
Hepar acts similarly, but it goes farther. It will often check
suppuration when impending : * but, when it is inevitable, it
has wonderful power in promoting it, and conducting it to a
speedy termination. This has been the doctrine and practice
of the homeopathic school for many years ; and testimony to
its soundness has now been given by Dr. Ringer. In a paper
published in the Lancet for February, 1874, he communicated
66
his experience of the value of sulphides in abscesses, boils, and
scrofulous sores ;” and wrote as follows :
“ The influence of the group on the suppurative process is
easily made manifest. Thus when sulphide of potassium or
sodium is administered , a thin, watery , unhealthy discharge
becomes at first more abundant, afterwards diminishing, and
throughout continues thicker and healthier, possessing indeed
the characters of " laudable ' pus. The condition of the sore
improves correspondingly, and its healing is promoted. .....
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vi, 233 .
 402 HEPAR SULPHURIS .

The sulphides appear often to arrest suppuration...... The

influence of this group is still more conspicuous after the
formation of pus. They then considerably hasten maturation,
whilst at the same time they diminish and circumscribe the
inflammation. They promote the passage of the pus to the
surface and the evacuation of the abscess." He recommends
the same treament for boils and carbuncles, for those indolent
subcutaneous swellings which may be called scrofulous
nodes, and for suppurating scrofulous glands. He prefers
the sulphide of calcium to the others, and finds the
eightieth of a grain generally sufficient as a dose . These
views are reiterated in the fourth edition of his Handbook of
Therapeutics.
You will not hesitate, moreover, to act on these principles
when more important organs are involved. Dr. Bähr speaks
of " brilliant cures ” of pneumonia with it, when the exuda
tion had become purulent ; and cites one which bears out his
commendations. Twenty weeks after the commencement of a
pneumonia, treated allopathically , his advice was sought for
the patient, a boy of six. “ The child was exceedingly emaci.
ated, had a slight hectic fever, was constantly troubled by a
sometimes spasmodic cough, with purulent and fætid expec
toration, diarrhea, and loss of appetite. The right side of the
thorax had become considerably hollowed, the left was abnor
mally bulging ; on the right side the percussion -sound was
perfectly empty, with intense bronchial respiration and slight
râles. We diagnosed pleuro - pneumonia of the right side, with
absorption of the pleuritic exudation , but continued presence
of the pneumonic infiltration in a state of purulent dissolu
tion. After various ineffectual remedies, the child was finally
put upon Hepar, third trituration , with such excellent results
that in eight days already the hollowing of the chest was con
siderably less. In about four weeks the right lung had almost
been restored to its normal condition, and the curvature of
the thorax had entirely disappeared, so that the child now
looks perfectly straight and thoroughly sound and healthy."
 HEPAR SULPHURIS . 403

He recommends the drug also in empyema, which was possibly

present in the foregoing case. The use of Hepar in pleurisy ,
however, has mainly lain on the other side of suppuration,
viz. in copious plastic exudation into the sac of some long
standing. Wurmb praised it highly here, and Dr. H. Gross
has put on record a striking case of cure by it after some
months' interval, which you may read in the eighteenth
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy.
2. Hepar next follows Mercury in acting on the liver. Of
its value here we have the fullest account from Dr. Bayes.
“ Those chronic states of engorgement of the liver,” he writes,
"inducing great abdominal distress from their interference
with the return of blood through the vena portæ , are greatly
benefited by a course of Hepar sulphuris . . . Hæmorrhoids
arising from this source are readily cured by this medicine.
The obstruction to the abdominal venous circulation often
gives great distress to the patient, preventing the abdominal
respiration, and hence inducing oppression of breathing. In
other cases it induces obstinate constipation, from a congested
>
condition of the veins in the rectum .” He gives from the third
decimal to the sixth centesimal attenuation . I know that other
practical physicians have the same confidence in the power of
Hepar to relieve engorgement of the liver and portal system .
Hæmorrhoids were among the affections for which sulphuretted
hydrogen was given of old ; and the pathogenesis has some
icteric symptoms.
3. We now follow the line of the Sulphur which enters into
the composition of our medicine, and find it influencing the
skin . It is an effectual external remedy for scabies ;* and,
given internally, has shown considerable power over those
cutaneous irritations which are incidental to certain employ
ments, as the grocers' and the wool- workers' itch. In the last
named trouble Hahnemann himself recommends it.t It is an
alternative to Graphites in psoriasis palmaris, with fissures ;
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 46 .
+ Lesser Writings, p. 512.
404 HEPAR SULPHURIS.

and has not unfrequently proved curative of scrofulous erup

tions . It is often beneficial in the treatment of ulcers.
4. But, next to its power over suppuration, the most im
portant action of Hepar is that which it exerts upon the re
spiratory mucous membrane. The conjunctiva is, as we have
often had occasion to remember, an offset of the commence
ment of this tract ; and in its affections Hepar plays an im
portant part. It is very useful in blepharophthalmia, when
the meibomian glands are much involved ; and in purulent
ophthalmia . But its most valuable property is its influence
upon the cornea . Dr. Peters, in aa Treatise on Diseases of the
Eye, has collected many recorded instances of its value: and
if you will look through these you will see how often it has
cured cases where onyx, hypopion and prolapsus iridis were
present; and also what power it has over recurring ulceration
of the cornea in ophthalmia scrofulosa . Then it acts upon
the ethmoid cells at the root of the nose, where Hahnemann's
recommendation of it when boring headache is present has
often been verified : the pain comes on, he says, every morn
ing, and lasts from 7 to 12 o'clock. It has less influence on
the nasal mucous membrane itself, but acts powerfully on that
>

of the larynx and trachea . Hahnemann pointed out that pa

thogenesy indicated Hepar and Spongia as the cardinal reme.
dies for croup ; and they remain so to the present day among
homeopathists, as you lately heard from Dr. Hale in this
place.* There is a general agreement in the canon laid down
for its employment by Dr. Elb, and excellently illustrated by
Dr. Hale, that it is after resolution has been initiated by
Aconite or Spongia, so that the breathing has a rattling rather
than a sawing sound, that Hepar is useful. The same prin.
ciples, mutatis mutandis, apply to less formidable affections of
the larynx. Dr. Bayes says that the " sensation as of a clot of
mucus or of internal swelling when swallowing. ” (which is one
of Hahnemann's original symptoms) is characteristic for it
here. I have found it very useful for the barking cough often
* See his excellent Lectures on Bronchitis, &c. ( Turner, 1875).
 HEPAR SULPHURIS . 405

left behind after measles. Bähr recommends it also in

croupous and Hempel in capillary bronchitis.
5. In a recent discussion on diphtheria at the British
Homeopathic Society,* Drs. Drury and Leadam agreed in
placing Hepar in the front rank of its remedies. The ex
perience of these excellent physicians, and the tendency of the
diphtheritic exudation to invade the larynx, would justify its
full trial in the disease.
Dr. Guernsey says that whenever Hepar is indicated there
will be found great sensitiveness to touch, draught of air, or
other impressions on the senses . Herein it resembles Silica,
which is its analogue in relation to the suppurative process.
Besides Sulphur, Calcarea, and Mercurius, Hepar has a
close analogue - especially in the respiratory sphere—in Kali
bichromicum .
Dr. Ringer's experience bears out that of many of our own
practitioners in indicating the lower triturations of Hepar as
containing all its curative virtues.

* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 740.

27
 LECTURE XXIII.

HYDRASTIS, HYDROCOTYLE, HYOSCYAMUS, HYPERICUM,

IGNATIA , INDIGO .

We will begin this lecture, as the last, with one from among
the American contributions to our Materia Medica, the
golden seal,

Hydrastis Canadensis.
The tincture of the fresh and the triturations of the dried
root are used in our practice.
Dr. Hale's article in his second edition contains two ex
cellent provings of Hydrastis in substance by medical men,
and some experiments with the dilutions by a class of students.
His fourth edition fairly summarises its curative power.
It seems that the golden seal has long been in repute
among the American Indians as an application to sore eyes
and legs. It then came to be considered a “ tonic ;" and,
when taken up by the “ botanic " practitioners of the country,
was used largely by them as a “ detergent ” in chronic catarrh
of the mucous membranes. It has not made its way into
ordinary practice, being unnoticed by Stillé and the elder
Wood ; and the same silence regarding it prevails in the later
treatises of the younger Wood and of our own Ringer. But
it had long been in use among homeopathists even before
their first public notices of it appeared, which were those of
Dr. Hastings in the British Journal in 1860, and of Dr. Hale
in the North American in 1858. Dr. Phillips' article contains
a full account of the reputation it has gained in the school of
 HYDRASTIS CANADENSIS . 407

Hahnemann , save as to its employment in cancer ; and he en

dorses our estimate of its activity.
Hydrastis has been found to contain two alkaloids, on which
most if not all of its efficacy depends. One, Hydrastin , is of
yellow colour, and is believed to be identical with Berberin ;
like it, it is “ tonic " and " anti-periodic," resembling Quinine
also in causing ringing of the ears. The other, Hydrastia,
occurring in white crystals, seems to be that element of the
plant which affects the mucous membranes. It is commonly
used as a muriate , and this -- in the proportion of a grain to
an ounce of water-seems the best form of the drug for local
application .
1. Used thus, or as a weak infusion of the dried root,
Hydrastis has a marvellous control over chronic catarrh of
mucous membrane wherever situated . Dr. Hale and Dr.
Phillips give each a long list of local disorders of this nature
in which they or others have found it curative. Their lists
include syphilitic coryza ; all forms of sore mouth ; chronic
angina ; leucorrhæa, both uterine and vaginal ; chronic con
junctivitis, otorrhæa, and ozæna . Both recommend the
coincident internal administration of the tincture ; and agree
that in catarrh of parts which cannot be locally reached the
latter alone is sufficient. Thus jaundice from catarrh of the
bile -ducts has often yielded to it. Dr. Yeldham praises it as
an injection in gleet ; and Mr. Clifton has excellently de
scribed * a form of dyspepsia calling for it, whose sodden
looking face, yellow slimy tongue, sour or putrid eructations ,
and combined feeling of distension and empty “ goneness” after
meals unmistakably point to mucous flux of the stomach .
What is the rationale of this influence ? The provings
suggest its being of homeopathic nature. Catarrh of the
eyes and nose , with profuse thick white secretion , was Dr.
Burt's most prominent symptom ; another had sticky mucus
about the fauces , with aa broad yellow stripe down his tongue.
Dr. Hale writes : - “ its action on all mucous surfaces is of a
* Monthly Hom. Reviem, xvii, 157.
408 HYDRASTIS CANADENSIS .

similar character. The natural secretion is at first increased ;

then it becomes abnormal in quantity and quality. At first
clear, white, transparent, and tenacious, it becomes yellow or
thick, green, and even bloody, and nearly always tenacious ;
so that the discharge may be drawn out in strings, as with
Kali bichromicum ."
The power which Hydrastis displays over catarrh and even
erosion of mucous membrane attends it also in the treatment
of ulceration of the skin. In most forms of chronic ulcer its.
application is beneficial ; and as a glycerole it is very healing
to excoriations—as of the nipple,—to fissures, and to intertrigo.
Dr. Phillips has cured two cases of rodent ulcer with it, and Dr.
Maclimont three of lupus. Here also the internal is recom
mended together with the external use ; though we have only
the analogy of its action on mucous membrane to suggest
that the curative influence is specific and homeopathic.
2. The next great sphere of operation for Hydrastis is that
weakened and congestive state of the lower bowel whose chief
expression is constipation . The earlierwriters on the drug in this
country - Drs. Hastings, Rogerson , Bradshaw , and Bayes - all
praise it here ; and I myself know no remedy so constantly
efficacious. I agree with Dr. Rogerson in finding it most
useful when the constipation is the fruit of sedentary habits,
and of the frequent resort to aperient medicines. I have
tried various dilutions and modes of administration ; but
have found the best to consist in giving a drop of the mother
tincture in water before breakfast, at first every day, and then
at increasing intervals. Dr. Phillips praises it in prolapsus
ani and in hæmorrhoids, -Dr. Yeldham also in the latter
trouble.
3. But by far the most interesting aspect of Hydrastis is.
its relation to cancer . It was first introduced — without name
in 1854, as a new remedy for this disease, by Dr. Pattison, who
used it as an ingredient in the caustic paste with which he
enucleated scirrhous tumours. Its internal use was taken up
by homeopathic practitioners - ever foremost in seizing on
 HYDRASTIS CANADENSIS . 409

any fresh means of aid to their patients, —and in 1860 and

1861 Drs. Hastings and Bradshaw reported their experience
with it, which was hardly favourable. But in the latter year
Dr. Bayes, and in 1863 Drs. Marston and Maclimont, were
able to speak of much better results. The latter found relief
of pain and improvement in general health nearly always
following its administration ; and in some instances its con
joined external application as a lotion so improved or even
removed the symptoms that a contemplated operation was
abandoned .
Here is one of their cases :
" Mrs. F— had suffered for six months from a swelling in
her left breast, for which she sought relief. The pain, which
was compared to knives being thrust into the part, had become
almost unbearable, and the patient was already beginning to
assume that worn appearance so characteristic of the can
cerous diathesis. The tumour, which had attained a con
siderable size, was hard, heavy, and adherent to the skin ,
which was dark, mottled, and very much puckered, the
nipple being also retracted. The patient was at once advised
to come into town in order to the enucleation of the tumour .
This, however, her circumstances prevented ; and without any
expectation of affording much relief, a lotion of Hydrastis
was ordered, with the internal use of the same medicine. The
pain almost immediately ceased, and the tumour so speedily
decreased in size that at the end of two months it had alto
gether disappeared, leaving but the puckered skin , which had
otherwise regained its natural appearance . When we last
heard of this patient she continued perfectly well. It is
needful to state that her health rapidly improved during
the treatment, and that her countenance regained the aspect
of health .”
Dr. Marston , writing a year and a half later, * says that
this patient “ has not again come under notice, though I
have no doubt that she would have put in an appearance
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 196.
410 HYDRASTIS CANADENSIS .

had anything occurred which would have called for our

assistance.”
To Dr. Bayes, however, we owe the best knowledge we
possess of the power of Hydrastis over cancer. In papers in
the nineteenth and twentieth volumes of the British Journal
of Homoeopathy, and in the third volume of the Annals of
the British Homeopathic Society, he gives a number of cases
treated by the drug both internally and externally. His final
conclusion is that it has no influence over the cancerous
dyscrasia as such , and is of little use in epithelial or uterine
carcinoma ; but that in scirrhous tumours developed in
glandular structure -- as in that of the breast - it is often of
great value, through a specific influence upon the gland itself.
When it fails in mammary scirrhus, it is generally found that
the gland has become absorbed or deeply involved in the
cancerous mass, so that there is little healthy tissue to act
upon . Dr. Marston also assents to this theory ; and what
makes it more probable is that Hydrastis has great power of
dispersing simple glandular tumours of the breast. But
however this may be, I think that these physicians express the
general experience of the homeopathic body in this country ;
and that in suspected mammary scirrhus we are well justified
in withholding the knife or the caustic, and first giving
our patients the benefit of the local and internal use of
Hydrastis.
Judging from Dr. Hale's book, our American confrères do
not seem to have followed us in this application of the remedy
we have derived from them . But a case is cited there from a
Belgian source , in which an apparently hopeless scirrhus of
the stomach occurring in an old man was so greatly influenced
for the better by Hydrastis, that the patient enjoyed the rest
of his life in tolerable comfort.
I have said nothing as to the rationale of the two latter
uses of Hydrastis, for they cannot as yet be explained, either
on antipathic or on homeopathic principles. We must know
more about the physiological action of the drug, on various
 HYDROCOTYLE ASIATICA . 411

subjects and under prolonged use, ere we can theorise on

the point.
The analogues of Hydrastis in its action on mucous mem
brane are Pulsatilla , Kali bichromicum , Ammonium muriaticum ,
and Antimonium crudum . On the lower bowel it acts like
Collinsonia, Aloes, Sepia , and Sulphur; and on the mammary
gland like Phytolacca and Conium .
The dose, as has been seen , and as is evident from the
quarters from which its praises come, need not be a very
minute one ; though unquestionably it acts well in at least the
lower dilutions.
A favourite indigenous Indian medicine now comes before
us, which has become the property of homeopathy by being
proved . I speak of the
Hydrocotyle Asiatica .
It is not officinal ; but a tincture of the entire plant may be
obtained from the chemists.
An article by Dr. Andouit, of Paris, containing a patho
genesis of the drug mainly made up of observations on
patients, is translated from the French in the sixteenth
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy ; and constitutes
my source of information regarding it.
Hydrocotyle has gained its native repute as a remedy for
that scourge of tropical climates, elephantiasis Arabum , the
true leprosy of the ancients. We have no positive observa
tions of its virtues in its own home ; but Dr. Andouit tells us
of the results of its trial in the Paris hospitals by Cazenove,
Devergie, and himself. Cazenove and Devergie cannot say
much of its power over leprosy, but extol its curative virtues
in chronic vesicular eruptions, especially eczema. Dr. Andouit
himself communicates cases in which it proved curative of
lepra tuberculosa, lupus exedens, and chronic eczema impeti
ginoides. Altogether there can be no question of the in
fluence of Hydrocotyle upon the skin ; and further provings
and more extensive experience may define it.
412 HYOSCYAMUS .

The pathogenetic symptoms hitherto elicited are not strik.

ing. The drug evidently stimulates the cutaneous surface,
causing redness, erythema, itching, and much perspiration ;
also there appears under its use increased secretion of urine,
often with deposit. The nerves of sight and hearing, and the
trigeminus, become hyperæsthetic ; and there is decided irri
tation of the uterus, even to visible redness of the cervix.
Acting on this last hint, Dr. Andouit has given Hydrocotyle
with much success in granular ulceration of the neck of the
womb, and in pruritus vaginæ .
Hydrocotyle reminds me somewhat of the crude action of
Silicea and Lycopodium , and of that of Dulcamara .
Dr. Andouit's usual dilution was the sixth .

My next medicine is the familiar henbane,

Hyoscyamus.
The homoeopathic tincture is made from the herbaceous part
of the fresh plant of the H. niger.
The proving of Hyoscyamus is in the fourth volume of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 104 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 123 from six fellow observers, and 355 from
forty -four authors. Most of these last are recording cases of
poisoning ; but Greding's observations were made on epilep
tics, melancholics, and maniacs, and hence - especially when
the symptoms belong to the nervous system - must be used
with caution . Hyoscyamus has also been proved by the
Vienna Society, of whose experiments you may read an ac
count in the sixth volume of the British Journal of Hom @ o
pathy ; and by Dr. John Harley, as recorded in his Old
Vegetable Neurotics. Besides these sources of information, I
may refer you to an exhaustive monograph on Hyoscyamus
by Dr. Laurent, constituting one of the theses for the doc
torate of the University of Paris ( An 1870, tome 7) .
Toxicologists are wont to tell us that the virtues of Bella
donna, Hyoscyamus, and Stramonium depend upon a common
 HYOSCYAMUS . 413

" active principle," and that their action is therefore essentially

identical. But when we turn to writers on therapeutics, we
hear nothing more about the relation of henbane to these
" deliriafacients ; " but find it classified as a substitute for
Opium in cases where the cerebral or intestinal influence of
the latter drug is undesirable. If “contraria contrariis " be the
rule by which it acts, one of these views must be wrong . But
as they are both founded on indubitable facts, the inference
can only be that the “calming, soothing, and tranquillising
effect " for which the drug is ordinarily administered is a
homeopathic action . It is especially observed, Pereira goes
on to say ,“ in persons suffering from great nervous irritability,
and from a too active condition of the sensorial functions."
He would have been more correct had he said that it is in
these only that it is observed .
Hyoscyamus has indeed nearly all the actions we have seen
in Belladonna, though in a milder degree. It irritates the
nervous centres, the mucous membranes, and the skin ; but
the functional excitement is only moderate, and the circulatory
disturbance never goes on to inflammation . Indeed , when the
drug is pushed, the phenomena are rather those of congestion
with oppression of function. Hence the somnolence so often
noted as resulting from it. It requires full doses to produce
it - two ounces of the succus or an equivalent quantity of the
alkaloid Hyoscyamia ; and is accompanied with giddiness
and weight across the forehead, flushed cheeks, and injected
eyes. It is full of dreams, and is often broken by mutterings
and slight jerkings of the limbs . Such a condition is totally
different from natural sleep, with its cerebral anæmia . In
cases of poisoning, the peculiar condition known as coma

vigil” or “ typhomania ” is sometimes induced ; or a com

plete apoplectic coma may supervene.
When functional excitement predominates over vascular en
gorgement, delirium is induced. This is rarely furious; it is
either a vivacious talkativeness with hallucinations of the
senses, or a spiteful, quarrelsome moodiness. There is no
414 HYOSCYAMUS .

hyperæmia with it. “Muscular twitchings , " says Dr.Harley ,

“and restlessness of the eyeballs are more frequently seen
during the action of Hyoscyamus than with that of
9
Belladonna ." With this condition insomnia is always present.
The differential diagnosis of the three mydriatics in the
treatment of head affections is fairly stated by Dr. Phillips.
“ In cases of cerebral hyperæmia the severer forms are re
moved by belladonna, while hyoscyamus proves its value when
there is little or no congestion, but much excitement. So in
the case of delirium ; the forms of this disorder for which
hyoscyamus is adapted are the milder and less inflammatory
ones, whereas the severer cases are better dealt with by
belladonna and stramonium . Hyoscyamus is specially useful
again in those cases of delirium with hallucinations which are
accompanied by little or no cerebral congestion, but where
there is great excitability of the nervous system , and where
there is reason to fear that the operation of opium would
prove injurious."
The two types of cerebral disorder, accordingly, in which
Hyoscyamus is useful are those occurring in fever and in
delirium tremens .
1. Hahnemann himself, in relating his treatment of the
fever - typhus and relapsing - which ravaged Germany after
the campaign of 1813, speaks of Hyoscyamus as the suitable
medicine when head symptoms became prominent ; and it has
ever since been the favourite remedy for this condition among
his disciples. It is exquisitely homeopathic thereto, as may
be seen from this picture of Dr. Harley's : - " after one hour,
pulse increased four beats ; sclerotic and conjunctiva a little
injected ; the face — chiefly the cheeks - hot and flushed ;
tongue dry and brown down the centre, the rest of the mouth
very clammy ; much somnolency and giddiness.” The urine
always manifests an increase of urea, and of the phosphates
and sulphates, just as during the action of Belladonna. It is
the form of typhus which used to be called “ febris nervosa
versatilis ” in which Hyoscyamus has proved most useful, with
 HYOSCYAMUS . 415

coma vigil and muttering delirium . It is also very helpful in

the typhoid form of puerperal fever. Painless, and it may be
involuntary diarrhæa calls for it in the latter (and indeed in
the puerperal state generally ); and in both a key -note for the
drug is that the patient will not remain covered. Dr. Phillips
praises it in simple febricula .
2. The delirium of Hyoscyamus corresponds most nearly
with that seen in delirium tremens. “ The connexion ," says
Dr. Harley - and Dioscorides had noted the same thing before
him— " between alcoholic intoxication and the effects of
henbane on the cerebrum and motor centres is un

doubtedly very close.” The experiments of the Vienna

provers show that the drug has the power also of producing
the gastric mucous derangement so often present in this
disease. It is an excellent remedy for it, calming the whole
system and promoting sleep. It is also of use in nympho
mania , in which the tendency to uncover the person is so
strong ; and in puerperal mania . Dr. Phillips says that “ in
bypochondriacal monomania , when the patient suffers from such
mental symptoms as syphilophobia, when really he has no
reason to think himself the subject of any venereal taint,
hyoscyamus will relieve the distressing despondency, and in
many instances remove the hallucination.” Hahnemann thinks.
that the delirium of Hyoscyamus closely resembles that of hy
drophobia, to which it is undoubtedly homeopathic along the
whole line ; but Belladonna and Stramonium , which act so
similarly, have been hitherto selected in its stead . It is never
curative in chronic insomnia, to which it acts as a mere
palliative ; but it is useful where sleep is restless or too .
dreamful from cerebral excitement or feverishness.
I have mentioned, on Dr. Harley's authority, the frequent oc
currence of muscular twitchings during the action of Hyoscya
mus. Dr. Oulmont,ofParis, has lately published * some interest
ing observations upon its use in mercurial and senile tremors,
and even paralysis agitans. We have long known its value in
* See Practitioner, X, 1 .
416 HYOSCYAMUS.

6
what might be termed “ local chorea " in children, as squinting,
stammering, twitching of the face, & c .; but this is an extension
of its field of action which , being thoroughly homeopathic,
we shall do well to follow up.
The only other recognised use of Hyoscyamus in the
homeopathic school is in the relief of cough . Hahnemann
observed it cause dry cough at night, constant while lying
down, but relieved on sitting up ; and such a cough is daily
being eased by the drug, even in infinitesimal doses. Dr.
Phillips transfers this use of it to his pages, and leaves it to be
understood that it is as a “ sedative " that it acts. But, if so,
why this precision as to the kind of cough it relieves ? A
sedative merely deadens nervous susceptibility, and would do
so as readily were a cough nocturnal or diurnal.
Hyoscyamus may yet receive wider applications. Hahnemann
says that it causes epistaxis and frequent catamenia, and has
cured chronic hæmorrhages. He describes, moreover, a form
of toothache in which it is remedial. * * It occurs,” he says,
“only from cold air, mostly in the morning, with rush of blood
to the interior of the head, that makes the tooth loose with a
formicating pain in it, and on chewing there occurs a sensation
as if it would fall out, whilst at the same time there is a
tearing pain in the gum. ” It is also worth noting that
Wepfer, in a case of poisoning observed by him , records
severe pains in the iliac region and in all the joints as having
occurred ; while Schneller, one of the Vienna provers, ex
perienced similar sensations. He speaks of drawing and
tearing pain in the joints, especially in the wrists and knees.
In Belladonna and Stramonium I have named the only
true analogues of Hyoscyamus.
As regards dose, Hahnemann recommended the 12th dilution ,
and those from the 1st to the 4th decimal have been much
employed in later times. But Dr. Harley's experiments would
indicate that the juice of henbane is not a very active poison ,
as much as three ounces of the succus of the Pharmacopæis
* Lesser Writings, p. 642 .
 HYPERICUM PERFORATUM . 417

being necessary to develope its full physiological effects.

There is probably a good deal of variability in the activity of
the plant ; and it might be well to follow Dr. Oulmont's
recommendation, and try whether the substitution of the
alkaloid would give us as good results. One eighth of a grain
of Hyoscyamia, according to Dr. Harley, has the same potency
as three ounces of the succus ; and Dr. Oulmont gives it in
granules cach containing a milligramme ( gr. 5) .
I have next to speak of the S. John's wort,

Hypericum perforatum .
A tincture is prepared from the entire fresh plant.
A proving of Hypericum is recorded in the fifth and sixth
volumes of the Hygea. Three women took each one dose of
four drops of the mother tincture, and the effects ( for which I
must at present refer you to Jahr's Symptomen - Codex ) lasted
several weeks.
The S. John's wort was of some ancient renown in medicine.
Dioscorides praised it for sciatica and agues. The following
extract from Johnson's edition of Gerarde's Herball will show
the account that was made of it in 1633. “ S. John's wort with
his floures and seed boyled and drunken , provoketh
urine, and is right good against the stone in the bladder,
and stoppeth the laske. The leaves stamped are good to
be layd upon burnings, scalds, and all wounds ; and also for
rotten and filthy ulcers. The leaves, floures, and seeds
stamped, and put into a glass with oyle olive, and set in
the hot sunne for certaine weeks together, and then strained .
from those herbes, and the like quantity of new put in, and
sunned in like manner, doth make an oyle of the colour of
blood , which is a most precious remedy for deep wounds, and
those that are thorow the body, for sinewes that are pricked,
or any wound made with a venomed weapon . " He then
describes a " compound oyle," prepared with Hypericum , white
418 IGNATIA AMARA .

wine, and oil of olives and turpentine, which he says is the

finest balsam in the world .
This repute of Hypericum as a vulnerary, after slumbering
for some time, has awakened again in the homeopathic school.
Its action on the nervous system , as inferred from the provings,
led Dr. Franklin to use it in injuries involving the nerves ; and,
in the large opportunities he enjoyed during the American war,
be learned to place the utmost confidence in its use. You will
find his recommendations in his Science and Art of Surgery.
“ Injuries of parts rich in nerves , particularly the fingers and
toes, and the matrix of the nails ;" open painful wounds, with
general prostration from loss of blood, and great nervous
depression ; and lacerated wounds — these, he says, are the
special spheres of its action . He considers that it stands in
the same relation to laceration as Arnica to contusion of the
tissues. He recommends the higher dilutions internally, and
locally one part of the tincture to twenty of warm water.
Dr. Ludlam had previously published 带* two good cases of
injury to the spinal cord benefited by Hypericum , and had
suggested that it might prove to be the Arnica of the nervous
centres ,
My friend Dr. Edward Madden has made a short proving of
Hypericum for me, taking at length as much as 260 drops of
the mother tincture in the day. It had little effect save the
diuretic one noted in the old Herball, and a few neuralgic
shoots in the eye- balls and the right ulnar nerve .
We now come to a medicine which owes its fame almost
entirely to Hahnemann and his disciples, the seed of the
Strychnos S. Ignatii, S. Ignatius' bean,
Ignatia amara .
It is ordinarily treated with alcohol to form a tincture ; but
the results of Jörg's provings seem to show that a trituration
of the bean would better preserve the virtues of the drug.
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xvii, 523 .
 IGNATIA AMARA . 419

Ignatia was fully proved by Hahnemann himself, and 620

of the 795 symptoms ascribed to it in the second volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre are his. 121 of the remainder are
from Jörg ; they are marked “ Hartlaub and Trinks," being
taken from their compendium . They were obtained by the
Professor himself and twelve of his pupils, who took doses of
from 10 to 200 drops of the tincture, and from one to four
grains of the powdered bean.
Ignatia contains aa considerable amount of Strychnia, more
indeed in proportion than Nux vomica itself. It is doubtless
to this alkaloid that it owes much of its energy. Yet
Strychnia could not take the place of either, nor could Ignatia
and Nux vomica be given interchangeably . The study of the
effects of our present medicine will show its own distinctive
individuality, and this study could nowhere better be carried
out than in Hahnemann's pathogenesis. He has bestowed
special pains upon it, enriching it with notes and references
between the symptoms; and his preface is full of important
observations .
In poisonous quantities Ignatia simply produces tetanic
spasms, and death by dyspnoea. But these phenomena are
resolved into their elements by the symptoms resulting from
smaller doses. Ignatia exalts the impressionability ofthe incident
nerves all over the body. We have hence pains and other morbid
sensations well-nigh everywhere ; increased susceptibility of
the special senses ; emotional sensitiveness ; and — probably
from reflex excitation - twitchings, constrictions, and spasms.
This action of the drug, however, is not deep and lasting. An
alternating series of symptoms--numbness, torpor, depression
-soon appear, which are themselves as superficial as their
predecessors. The febrile symptoms which the drug causes
have the same characteristics. Its chill is readily removed
by external warmth ; and its heat is unaccompanied by thirst.
So is it with the mental and moral phenomena which occur.
The sense of being in a hurry ; the ready starting, irrita
bility, impatience, and querulousness which mark its first
420 IGNATIA AMARA .

effect, often alternate with undue hilarity or silent melan

choly.
These symptoms have naturally led to the use of Ignatia in
the treatment of hysteria. Comparing the moral state it suits
with that which indicates Nux vomica, Hahnemann says :
“ it is not where anger, urgency , violence predominate, but
where there prevail rapid alternations between hilarity and
desire to weep ." I do not say that Ignatia will follow
hysteria into all its ramifications ; but it will remove many of
its painful, spasmodic, and convulsive phenomena (some of
which will come before us directly ), and by its continued use
will greatly improve the fundamental perversion of the
nervous functions . It is also of frequent service in other
neurotic affections. Before Hahnemann's time it was in use
for epilepsy, when brought on by violent emotions. He
agrees that in a first attack so caused, when assuming a
threatening aspect either on account of its duration or rapid
recurrence, it may even be permanently cured by a single
small dose : this his own experience confirms. He says,
:

moreover , that epileptic fits which only occur after chagrin or

grief about a moral wrong, and never appear from any other
cause , may be prevented by the drug. But he cannot allow
that chronic and settled epilepsies are ever curable by it.
This “ chagrin ” ( that is, sense of offence ) is a causa mali to
which he thinks Ignatia specially adapted, when it affects
persons who are not in the habit of breaking out into vehe
mence or of seeking revenge, but who keep it concealed and
dwell upon it in their recollections. But when fright or grief
are the exciting emotions Ignatia has been found hardly less
useful. It is often of service in the eclampsia of children or
of puerperal women, when thus caused or from reflex irrita
tion, where the phenomena are spinal rather than cerebral.
In neuralgia, also, it has found a place. This is excellently
characterised by Gerson in his article on the therapeutics of
prosopalgia, which you will find translated in the twentieth
* See Dr. Hirsch in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 221.
 IGNATIA AMARA . 421

volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. Its neuralgia

is that of hyperæsthetic patients, which nevertheless is borne
patiently or at most with quiet weeping ; it is not deeply
rooted, and often alternates with pain of the same kind else
where. Dr. Nankivell has communicated a striking cure of
sciatica with it.*
Ignatia also causes, and has cured, several local affections,
though probably acting always on the nervous elements of the
part. It readily excites headache, especially a pressive aching
in limited spots, shifting from one to the other. Sometimes
the concentrated pressure is described as if from a pointed
body, and resembles the “ clavus hystericus," in which the
medicine has often been found useful . In the fifteenth
volume of the Monthly Homeopathic Review you will find a
graphic picture of the headache of Ignatia , by Dr. Shuldham ;
it is of course accompanied with great impressionability of the
senses, and frequently passes off with the evacuation of a
large quantity of pale limpid urine. At its height it is
often agonising ; there is restlessness then and chilliness
throughout. Then there occurs a peculiar disturbance of
vision which Hahnemann compares to the “ spurious vertigo ”
of Herz : " aa circle of white, shining, flickering zig-zags when
looking out of the line of vision ; the letters at which one
looks beccming invisible, and those which are close by
becoming so much more bright.” In the throat Ignatia
causes a sensation as if a lump were there ; there is a sore
pain when swallowing, but between the acts of deglutition the
lump is felt most, and there is then (and then only, Hahne
mann says) a sense of stinging. Nervous sore throats so
characterised are readily cured by the medicine ; the “ lump ”
is no real swelling. A peculiar feeling of weakness at the pit
of the stomach was complained of by more than one of the
provers ; and this is said by Hahnemann to be aa characteristic
symptom of Ignatia. The great formation of flatulence
* Monthly Hom . Review , xv, 30.
28
422 INDIGO .

which is noted is a frequent hysterical symptom . Then we

observe in several of the provers a remarkable tendency to
prolapse of the rectum at stool. This trouble when occurring
in children, and also proctalgia in sensitive adults, has often
been removed by Ignatia. Dr. Hirsch finds it no less useful
in constipation from weakness of the lower bowel ; and
confirms the general impression of its usefulness when
ascarides infest this part. The menses are premature and
profuse. There is itching of the skin, of which Hahnemann
observes that it is characterised by ready disappearance after
scratching. Sleep is absent, or very light, or prevented by
startings.
Besides the epilepsy I have mentioned , Hahnemann found
Ignatia in use for intermittents. His own observations led
him to lay down that “only those forms of ague can be cured
by it which are characterised by thirst during the cold, and
absence of thirst during the hot stage.”
Chamomilla , Coffea , Nux vomica, and Stramonium are the
general analogues of Ignatia. It is, like the first named,
pre -eminently a women and children's remedy.
The medicine seemis in favour alike with those who use
infinitesimals and those who prefer more substantial doses.
I have a few words to say in conclusion about

Indigo.
The dye of commerce is triturated for homeopathic use.
There are provings of Indigo in the fourteenth and forty
fifth volumes of the Allgemeine homöopathische Zeitung. I
have not access to either ; but the symptoms of the former
are in Jahr, and of the latter aa full account is given by Hempel.
A feeling as if the brain were distending at the centre ;
epistaxis; toothache, of a rheumatic character ; bloating of the
stomach ; and a good deal of mucous urinary disorder - these
are the only noteworthy effects I can discover in the pathogenesis
of Indigo. As a remedy, it has been used in the old school with
 INDIGO. 423

occasional success in epilepsy and chorea. Teste states that

he hascured with it some worm - fevers in children ; and has
found it of service in chronic catarrh of the bladder, and in
urethral stricture following gonorrhoea. It is a drug I have
never myself used ; nor has Espanet, Bayes, or Guernsey
anything to say about it.
 LECTURE XXIV .

IODINE AND THE IODIDES .

We shall be engaged during the whole of our time to -day

with Iodine and the Lodides.

Iodium
is prepared for homeopathic practice in a saturated alcoholic
solution, which contains about one tenth part of the drug, and
is reckoned as lx in making the subsequent attenuations.
These should be freshly prepared whenever the drug is to be
employed in acute disease .
The extensive use into which Iodine soon came after its
discovery in 1812 led to a rapid accumulation of observations
as to its physiological effects. It was also selected for pror
ing by Jörg, who, with five of his pupils, took it in doses of
from half a grain to two grains . The symptoms thus ob
tained were collated by Hartlaub and Trinks in the second
volume of their Arzneimittellehre, and a few added as observed
by themselves and Schreter. Hahnemann had already pub
lished in the first edition of his Chronic Diseases 153 symp
toms of his own as caused by the drug ; and in the second
edition he incorporated these with the collection of Hartlaub
and Trinks, and some new observations from Gross and ron
Gersdorff, making 724 in all . Of this total 348 are from
authors. Some of Hartlaub and Trinks' citations are effects
of Iodide of Potassium-Kali iodidum ; and of these Hah.
nemann has not availed himself. We must therefore go back
to their work for them ;; and we shall also find there a separate
 IODIUM . 425

pathogenesis of the compound, apparently from provings, but

without name or other indication of origin. It contains 383
symptoms. I would also refer you to Dr. Cogswell's Essay on
Iodine and its compounds ; to a collection of “ Observations on
the curative and noxious effects of Iodine," by Dr. Wilcox , in
the first volume of the Annals ; and to a “ Study of Iodine,"
by Dr. Madden and myself, in the twenty -first volume of the
British Journal of Homeopathy. In this last you will find
references to authorities for any unsupported statements I
shall make on the present occasion.
You will notice that I have spoken of Iodinė and of its
compound with potassium in the same paragraph. I have
done so advisedly. I am quite unable to see any difference in
kind between the physiological effects of the two subetances ;
although the presence of the alkali undoubtedly modifies these
as regards force and frequency of appearance, and makes a
considerable difference in practical use. Chemistry points in
the same direction. M. Sée* justly argues that Iodine must
necessarily unite with sodium in the stomach and potassium
in the blood , and circulate so compounded throughout the
frame; so that to give Iodine is virtually to give an alkaline
iodide. On the other hand Professor Binzt has shown that
when Iodide of Potassium reaches the tissues it is decom
posed, and free Iodine liberated. The presence of protoplasm
and of oxygen is all that is necessary to effect this change, as
he has demonstrated by experiment. I Thus, conversely, the
ultimate effect of giving Iodide of Potassium is to supply
free Iodine to act on the living matter of the body , and we
may speak of the effects of either as belonging to the action
of Iodine. The chief difference is that the local irritant in

* London Medical Record , i , 757.

† Practitioner, xii, 15.
I No such decomposition takes place when Bromide of Potassium is
similarly treated, and we have already seen that the compounds of Bromine
with the alkalies have an action entirely different from that of the pure
substance, and requiring separate discussion.
426 IODIUM .

fluence of the metalloid is greatly diminished by its union with

the alkali, so that large doses can ordinarily be introduced
through the stomach without resentment on the part of that
organ. A good many of the noxious effects of Iodine noted
by the older observers arose from its being given in simple
alcoholic solution. Such a tincture, unless largely diluted,
would precipitate the drug on entering the stomach, and leave
>

it there in substance to irritate the mucous membrane as we

all know it does the skin . Hence the violent gastro -enteric
irritation, the vomiting, colic, and diarrhea, which Hahne
mann cites from many authors . Those who, like Coindet and
Gairdner, used the drug more carefully had no such acci
dents ; and since Iodide of Potassium has been the form of
administration they have rarely been seen . The “ iodism "
observed by such therapeutists belongs either to the nervous
system or to the distant tissues, as we shall see presently : it
is set up subsequent to absorption.
What, then , are the remote effects of Iodine when intro
duced into the circulation and diffused through the frame ?
1. They are, first of all, irritative in nature. The peculiar
form which iodic irritation takes is best studied in its most
frequent seat — the upper portion of the respiratory mucous
)
membrane. “ There is first noticed ," says Dr. Ringer, “ some
slight running at the nose, with occasional sneezing, and a
little frontal headache ; these symptoms becomemore marked,
when the conjunctiva of the eyes is injected, and the tears
abundantly flow . The loose tissues about the orbit become
swollen, reddened, and oedematous, while occasionally a pecu
liar rash appears on the skin of the face. ... The nose is
sometimes reddened, especially at the tip, and is at the same
time rather swollen . The rash has not always the same look.
It is often very much like acne, and is always hard, shotty,
and indurated, but the papules may be broad and large, and
covered with what looks like a half -developed vesicle or pus
tule.” Some instances of the occurrence of this coryza - always
from Kali iodidum - are collected in the twenty -third volume
 IODIUM . 427

of the British Journal of Homæopathy ; where you will find it

noted of the watery nasal discharge that it feels cool, and
causes no excoriation, herein differing from that of Arsenic.
Erythema, with oedema, of skin and mucous membrane are
the phenomena here presented to us ; and we see it going on
to infarction of glandular structure in the acne of the former,
and to copious flux in the latter. Similar effects may at times
be seen from the drug over the whole cutaneous surface, and
in nearly every part of the mucous tracts. There is a stomatitis
incident to its use , accompanied with desquamation and
ptyalism . Angina is a characteristic symptom of saturation
of the system with it. Besides the gastritis and enteritis of
its local influence, there is a gastric - if not also an enteric
catarrh occasionally resulting from small doses, and seen
after introduction of the drug into the circulation otherwise
than by the stomach . The lower portions of the respiratory
tract exhibit signs of the same irritation that we have seen in
the upper. In the larynx and trachea we may have hoarse
ness, aphonia, and chronic inflammation, even simulating
laryngeal phthisis ; and while the bronchi are slightly and
rarely affected , the lungs show the influence of the drug by
congestive oppression, hæmoptysis, and even pneumonia . The
genito- urinary tract is the only part which seems to resist its
action . The skin manifests it sometimes in such intense
erythema as that described by Dr. Inman ;* or, more commonly,
in eruptions of acne or of pustules.
Nor does the iodic irritation limit itself to skin and
mucous membrane. Serous membrane also feels it, if the
effusion into pleura and peritoneum found in autopsy means
anything ;-Wallace also noting that, among his patients who
took full doses of Iodide of Potassium for syphilis, several had
acute pain over the left false ribs, with cough, dyspnea, and
fever.t Glandular structure also is very frequently affected .
The first result is stimulation to increased action, whence we
* New Theory and Practice of Medicine, p. 270.
† Lancet, 1835-6, i, 9.
428 IODIUM .

have the salivation and diuresis often noted, and the increase
of the biliary and pancreatic secretions, as observed ( among
others) by Jörg's provers and by Gairdner. The testes feel
its influence in increase of sexual appetite, and the ovaries
show it in menorrhagia. The ultimate effect is either chronic
inflammation, as recorded by Christison of the liver and by Sée
of the kidneys, or atrophy, of which the mammæ and testicles
are the subjects. This last result of the action of Iodine has
been much doubted by recent writers. But their scepticism
only arises from ignorance of the older observations. Habne
mann cites some of these ; and to every one he mentions I could
add two others. Diminution in the functional energy of the
ovaries makes it probable that these organs are simi
larly affected ,-barrenness having occurred from the use
of the drug in young females previously prolific, and the
menses being often suppressed.
Whether the lymphatic glands are similarly influenced by
Iodine is a question of much interest in its bearing on
therapeutics. Hahnemann cites Röchling as having observed
“ induration of the axillary glands ” from its use. But
when we examine the original, we find that the author is re
porting the treatment by Iodine of glands already enlarged,
which it caused to suppurate readily; and that his “ Vereiterung"
has been transcribed “ Verhärtung.” The mistake is Hart
laub and Trinks', from whom Hahnemann has copied . Dr.
Cartwright, however, has put on record two cases in which
the glands of the neck enlarged under the action of the drug
given for other complaints.*
For the effects I have now ascribed to Iodine abundant
evidence is given in the works I have mentioned at the outset.
And as we study them the interesting fact comes out that
all these irritations belong to the class of medicinal actions
which Dr. Drysdale has distinguished as " contingent."
They are not " absolute " effects of the drug, requiring only
its administration in certain quantity, and their absence being
* Monthly Hom . Review , xii, 411.
 IODIUM . 429

the exception to the rule. It is rather the other way. Iodine

locally applied, whether to skin or mucous membrane, will
certainly irritate. But introduce it into the circulation, and
this result cannot be predicted . Often enough it produces no
obvious physiological effect at all, even when given in large
doses. * When it does irritate, in one person its influence will
fall on the Schneiderian mucous membrane, in another on the
mouth or stomach, in another on the pleura, in another on the
skin. And of all these actions that is true which Dr. Imbert .
Gourbeyre has noted and formulised, that with contingenter
goes omni dosi. It is frequently remarked by Dr. Ringer
when speaking of the various phenomena of what he calls
iodism , that “ even minute medicinal doses will sometimes
produce " this or that effect. He explains in one place that
he means a grain of Iodide of Potassium or even less. We
shall see this even more strikingly exhibited when we come to
the phenomena of iodism as described by the older observers.
2. Of these I now proceed to speak as the neurotic effects
of the drug. I suspect that they are really irritative in nature ,
peculiar only in the seat being the various portions of the
nervous substance. But, phenomenally, they are best classed
separately .
It was early noted by the introducer of Iodine into practice
-Coindet of Geneva — that when the system became satu
rated with the drug a peculiar train of symptoms manifested
themselves. These were insomnia, palpitation, tremors, and
anxietas ; and therewith rapid emaciation, often associated
with bulimia . The obviously nervous symptoms first men
tioned were largely seen and recorded during the Iodine
mania which set in on the publication of Coindet's results.
This fact is universally known as regards Iodide of Potassium , and
Gairdner says of Iodine itself— " Some persons take it in large doses for a
)
length of time with perfect impunity.” “ Others," he adds, " from that
peculiar, undescribed, and unintelligible state of constitution called by
physicians an idiosyncrasy, are speedily and violently affected by very small
doses. "
430 IODIUM .

Gairdner * has fully described the tremors, which resemble

those of mercury . Manson and Cooper have seen these go on
to twitchings and other convulsive movements, and Brodie bas
known them end in paralysis. The action on the brain mani.
fested in the insomnia has shown itself in various other ways.
Determination of blood to the head is frequent, causing head
ache with sense of fulness, giddiness, drowsiness, epistaxis,
and even a sort of intoxication . One of the subjects of
Wallace's large doses of Iodide of Potassium was seized while
taking it with violent headache, and had dilated pupils and an
incessant motion of the eyes like that of a child with con .
genital cataract. Muscular tremors then supervened, and
lastly. hemiplegia ; from which he recovered but slowly.
Gairdner has observed and described the anxietas characteristic
of the drug. It differs, he says, from hypochondriasis in this
respect, that the patients occupy themselves with the present
rather than with the future. They describe it commonly as
a feeling of (doubtless psychical) sinking and faintness which
is particularly depressing ; and they have been heard to com
plain of this even when suffering violent pain.f The sensory
centres are also affected, as by obscuration of vision, partial
deafness, and illusions of the sense of touch . The first of
these may depend on irritation of the retina. Hempel cites
a case in which the symptoms indicated retinitis ; and Ricord
states that he has seen Iodide of Potassium produce tran
sitory amaurosis, like that of Bright's disease, and dependent
on sub - retinal ædema.
But the most complete observations of this form of iodism
are those of Rilliet, of Geneva. A memoir presented by him
to the French Academy of Medicine was referred to Trousseau,
Essay on the effects of Iodine on the Human Constitution. London ,
1824.
+ Ringer also bas observed that “ Iodide of Potassium sometimes pro
duces distressing depression of mind and body. The patient becomes
irritable, dejected, listless, and wretched . Exercise soon prodaces fatigue
and even fainting ."
 IODIUM. 431

and his report thereon may be read in the twenty -fifth volume
of its Bulletin . It seems that Geneva is singular in the
entire absence of Iodine — so universally diffused elsewhere
from its air and waters ; so that its inhabitants offer a virgin
soil in which the drug can bear fruit. Hence, says M. Chatin ,
the frequency of goitre there ; but hence pretty certainly the
remarkable susceptibility displayed to the influence of the
substance when administered medicinally. The Genevan
bronchoceles are cured with doses of Iodide of Potassium of
less than a milligramme in amount ; and it is while taking
such “ nearly infinitesimal quantities," as Trousseau calls them,
that the “grave accidents ” he cites from Rilliet occur. They
have been seen in these sensitive subjects from taking a ten
thousandth part of the Iodide in their table salt ; and even
from staying at the sea -side, where it is calculated that they in
hale from the fiftieth to the tenth of a milligramme in a day.
The first symptom of iodism which manifests itself is the
emaciation . It sets in suddenly and proceeds with startling
rapidity. The goitre ( if there is one) , the mamma , and the
testicles go first ; then the face falls in ; then the whole body
wastes. There is no gastro -enteritis ; but exaggerated
appetite is present, going on to bulimia : there is also much
nervous palpitation. Then supervenes a condition of hypo
chondriasis or hysteria with weakness, sadness, insomnia , and
nervous susceptibility. There are painful sensations in the
stomach , especially at its greater curvature ; and the face is
pale, green , or yellow .
I cite these observations especially for the light they throw
on the emaciation of Iodine. This phenomenon has early and
constantly attracted attention ; and it has been noted that it is
commonly accompanied by profuse sweats and accelerated
pulse, thus making it resemble closely the wasting of tuber .
culosis. There are three ways in which it has been accounted
for. The first and most common is to say that Iodine is a
stimulant to the absorbents ; and that thus, absorption being
rendered over -active, atrophy follows upon its use. I shall
432 IODIUM .

show reason for objecting to this explanation even of the local

effects of the drug ; and I think that it quite fails when
applied to the emaciation of the system at large. The absorb
ents are set for the nutrition, not for the wasting, of the
body as a whole. The lacteals take up the chyle from the
intestines, and the lymphatics absorb the not altogether effete
products of the disintegration of the tissues, and the residue
(if any) of the liquor sanguinis which has been poured forth
from the capillaries for their nutrition . Chyle and lymph,
thus selected and taken up by the absorbent vessels, are passed
through the chain of absorbent glands, in which they undergo
that progressive elaboration which fits them to be discharged,
as blood , into the torrent of the circulation . It is evident,
therefore, that a drug which has the property of stimulating
the absorbent system must promote rather than lower the
nutrition of the frame. * A second view would account for
the atrophy of Iodine by the gastro - enteritis which it is un
doubtedly liable to occasion , attributing it to the impairment
of digestion which must result from this state of the primæ vice.
But a larger survey of the facts will at once show this view to
be untenable, as there is no constant connexion between the
gastro - enteric symptoms and the emaciation ; while Arsenic,
which affects the alimentary canal far more certainly and
severely, causes by no means so rapid and intense a wasting.
Lastly, Iodine has been styled a " liquefacient " of the tissues,
and is supposed to promote their disintegration with such
rapidity that the waste is in excess of the supply, and hence
atrophy. We may have to call up some such action when we
come to consider the power of the drug over syphilitic and
other neoplasms; but we cannot, Ithink , use it to explain the
general wasting which is induced. To begin with, the quantity
which needs to be introduced is quite insufficient to effect such
The notion here combated is identical with the Hunterian theory of
ulceration , which supposed this process to depend upon an over-active state
of the absorbents. Long given np in this sphere, it still holds its place in
speculation on the modus operandi of drugs.
 IODIUM . 433

a process. We have, moreover, called to mind that the very

function of the lymphatic absorbents is to take up such tissue
substance, disintegrated but not altogether effete, and, having
elaborated it into blood, to pour it back into the circulation ..
Thus, supposing the absorbent system to continue healthy, the
result of such increased rapidity in the disintegration of
tissue would only be an increase in the purity of the substance
and the energy of the functions of the entire organism .
In this “ supposing ” I have indicated what I believe to be
the true direction in which to look for an explanation of the
atrophy of Iodine. Its sphere is the great absorbent system ,
especially in its lacteal portion ; but its action there - pro
bably by irritation of the active protoplasm — is depressant*
rather than stimulant. Given a sluggish taking up of the
chyle by the lacteals, and an insufficient elaboration of their
contents by the mesenteric glands, and we have at once a most
important channel of nutrition choked up and rendered use
less. The fatty aliments being those which the lacteals chiefly
select, the emaciation becomes more rapidly apparent than if
it had been the albuminous elements whose supply was cut
off. But you will remember how Dr. Hughes Bennett - just
lost to us, following Ascherson of Berlin, has shown that
the presence of oil is essential to the assimilation of albumen ;
and infers that if the fatty elements of food be insufficiently
supplied, the albumen remaining unassimilated in the
blood will be deposited in the tissues as tubercle. If it is still
tenable to explain in this way the occurrence of primary tuber
culosis, it may account for the occasional development of
phthisis pulmonalis in iodized patients, in whom no previous
tendency thereto had existed.
3. One word yet upon the possible hæmatic influence of
Iodine. It can hardly be imagined that so universal an irri
tant of the living matter should circulate in the blood with
* Dr. H. Goullon says that the mesenteric glands are found reduced in
size after poisoning by Iodine ; but I know not his authority for the
statement.
 434 IODIUM .

out affecting its corpuscles. But whether this be the rationale

or not, it is certain that Iodide of Potassium every now and
then causes petechial rash and purpura , and that under the
long -continued influence of Iodine the blood and the secretions
become thin and watery. It is, like Mercury, an anti-plastic.
We have now to consider the recognised uses of Iodine as a
medicine, and see what relation they bear to its physiological
action ; subsequently reviewing the further applications of it
which have been made, derived from the latter according to
the principle of similarity.
1. The earliest and the prerogative application of Iodine is
its use in bronchocele. “ From time immemorial,” as Stillé
says, “ sponges and other marine products containing Iodine
have been recognised as popular remedies for goitre.” When
this substance was discovered in one of such products, the
fucus vesiculosus, it was the happy thougit of Coindet to see
if it would not prove to be the active ingredient of the weed.
He found it to be so ; and from that time to this the curative
action of Iodine in bronchocele has been one of the few cer
tainties (with rare exceptions) of ordinary medicine.
What is the rationale of its action ? Let me read you a
short narrative : it is from the pen of one of the veterans of
Homeopathy, Dr. Goullon .*
“ A man, 62 years of age, very bilious, and from his youth
affected with gout, got from an allopathic doctor for sciatica
two scruples of Kali iodidum in four ounces of water, with
directions to take morning and night a tablespoonful. After
about eight days there came on a rapidly growing swelling
of the thyroid gland, with some sensitiveness to the touch,
and a feeling of oppression. He was, however, ordered to
continue the medicine, and in the second week he got all the
signs of endocarditis -- oppression, weakness almost amount
ing to fainting, tumultuous throbbing, intermitting and un
equal beats of heart and pulse, tensive pain across the chest.
* Translated from Allg. hom. Zeit ., xlv, 63, in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., si, 335.

1
 IODIUM . 435

The right ventricle gradually became dilated . ” The medicine

was omitted, and Mercurius, Arsenicum , and Sepia in suc
oession removed the symptoms.
I give you this for what it is worth. Let no one say, how
ever, in derogation of homoeopathic doctrine, that Iodine has
never produced goitre ; and do not let the singularity of the
occurrence weigh too much with you, having regard to the
peculiarly contingent and idosyncratic nature of all the effects
of the drug . But let us consider what bronchocele is, and
what are the phenomena of its disappearance under Iodine.
The thyroid body, whose enlargement constitutes the dis
ease, is one of those ductless glands whose operation is doubt
less concerned with the composition of the blood itself. It may
be (as Mr. Simon thinks) a diverticulum for the cerebral cir.
culation, as the spleen is for that of the stomach ; but its
structure forbids the supposition that this is its only function
any more than that is of the spleen . The albuminous matter
it separates from its large supply of blood is contained in the
interstices of its honeycomb -like structure ; and is probably
taken up from thence by its no less abundant lymphatics.
Simple bronchocele (with which alone we are at present con
cerned ) seems to be a failure on the part of the lymphatics to
undertake this absorption, so that the secretion accumulates ;
and this, and not any increase in its fibrous or connective
tissue, constitutes (at first, at least) the hypertrophy of the
gland. It may come on rapidly, like the splenic enlargement
of ague ; and, like that, may rapidly subside. In old and hard
goitres, of course, the stroma itself must have become
thickened , and the fluid possibly absorbed . These are
permanent.
Now the conclusions at which we have already arrived as to
the action of Iodine on the lymphatic system , and the case of
Dr. Goullon's just related , suggest forcibly that Iodine acts
homæopathically in the cure of the simple, recent, and soft
goitre which depends upon 'unabsorbed secretion. Another
fact pointing in the same direction is the frequent occurrence,
 -
436 IODIUM .

noted by all observers, of increase of the tumour, with hard

ness, pain, and tenderness, when needlessly large doses are
given. But still more convincing is the minute dose which
often suffices for the cure. I have already mentioned the
experience of the Genevese practitioners. But in regions whose
inhabitants are less susceptible to the drug we have obser.
vations of the same kind . Dr. Kidd records a case in which
a large but soft goitre, of many months' standing, entirely
disappeared in two months under the hundredth of a grain of
Iodine night and morning .* A still more striking instance is
related in the Revue homeopathique Belge for August, 1874 .
The enlargement was of fifteen years' standing, and had
reached the size of a child's head ; but was soft. Iodine 6
was given on August 3rd , 1873, and repeated every few days
up to the end of the year. Improvement was felt after the
second dose, and on January 1st, 1874, the tumour was found
to have completely disappeared. Mr. Cameron has even had
a case in which the 30th dilution effected the purpose ; but it
took aa twelvemonth in doing it. I
It is otherwise, I think, with the old hard goitres we some
times meet. Mr. Cameron treated two such cases with his
30th dilution, but effected little more than relief of distressful
sensations,—that is, of irritation of the tumour such as large
doses cause . Dr. Kidd, in the valuable paper on the subject
to which I have already referred , mentions a hard goitre in
which he could get no effect from Iodine till he gave half a
grain three times a day ; but with these doses he did cure
it, and with still larger quantities the most indurated bron .
choceles have been known to be melted down . I think that
we must here suppose a destructive action of the drug
to be exerted , such as we shall have to invoke to account for
its power over syphilitic gummata ; and that we shall often
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxv, 180. Dr. Kidd's first decimal is evidently
our present first centesimal.
+ See ibid ., xxxii, 720.
| Ibid ., iii, 469.
 IODIUM . 437

do well to use its local instead of internal exhibition.

The success of the application of ointment of biniodide
of mercury in India is, I understand, very constant and
gratifying
When goitre is cystic, Iodine must be still more locally
applied . It must be injected into the cavity ; though even
there, as we shall see with hydrocele, it may act after a
specific manner . But it may find place as a homeopathic
remedy in yet another form of the disease, the exophthalmic.
The coincident affection of the heart in Dr. Goullon's case
rather suggests that the thyroid enlargement was vascular ;
and Trousseau, commenting on the iodism described by
Rilliet, says he has seen the same condition in cases of Graves'
disease. Dr. Horatio Wood says of iodine, that “ experience
has demonstrated its value ” in exophthalmic goitre also ;
but I know of no record thereof.
II. The transition from bronchocele to scrofula is natural.
Enlargement of the thyroid was supposed to be so intimately
connected with the scrofulous diathesis that the name
“ struma ” was applied to it ; and when Dr. Stillé says that
the marine products containing Iodine have long been
recognised as popular remedies for goitre, he adds, “ and for
scrofula . ” Accordingly, when this substance was discovered
to be their active ingredient, and was found powerfully
curative of bronchocele, it was at once applied to the treatment
of scrofula . The names of Manson * and Lugolt stand
foremost among those who have tested and written upon
it ; and their testimony to its virtues is very earnest .
What is scrofula, and what is Iodine calculated to do in its
treatment in the light of the physiological action of the
drug ?
According to the doctrine of Niemeyer, now generally
received , scrofula is that vulnerability of constitution which
we call “ delicacy " plus a tendency on the part of the
* On the Effects of Iodine. London , 1825.
t On Iodine in Scrofula , translated by O'Shaughnessy. London, 1831.
29
438 IODIUM.

lymphatic glands in the neighbourhood of any disordered part

to take on hyperplasia and become enlarged . The other
)
so - called “ strumous ” affections are in no way specifically
distinct from the same diseases in non - strumous subjects,
though they are more readily induced and more difficult to
cure . But this doctrine, though it well connects the facts,
does not explain why the lymphatic glands are so apt to take
on the morbid action specified. It leaves out of sight,
moreover, what I think cannot be gainsaid, that these glands
may be and often are primarily affected . I must agree
with Dr. H. Goullon , in his excellent treatise on Scrofulous
Affections, that scrofula is essentially a morbid condition of
the lymphatic and lacteal system , whereby the lymph and
chyle are supplied in an imperfect or vitiated state to the
blood, and the nutritive processes thereby impaired .
If this be so, we can well understand that Iodine may
change for the better the whole scrofulous diathesis, owing to
the profound action we have seen it to possess upon the lacteo
lymphatic system ; and that we are quite within the range of
homeopathy when we so use it. It must be especially
suitable to the sanguine form of the scrofulous constitution.
As regards the several local disorders, it must depend upon
the elective affinity of the drug for the part affected whether
it shall have any specific influence over its morbid condition.
Of these we shall speak farther on. But we must consider
here the action of Iodine upon the absorbent glands them
selves when affected by scrofula. I have shown its power of
engorging them ; and I have no doubt that here, as with
goitre, the recent affection is fully under the homeopathic
action of the drug, and may be dispersed by small doses.
My friend Dr. Belcher has the utmost coufidence in it when
the glands of the neck are the part affected : he gives grain
doses of the first decimal trituration of Kali iodidum , and
applies a weak solution locally. Dr. Goullon relates two
cases of laryngismus stridulus obviously dependent on en
larged bronchial glands, where Iodine in small doses was
 IODIUM . 439

curative. I have myself great confidence in it in the

tabes mesenterica of childhood . Under its use the hectic
first subsides ; and the remaining symptoms, if proper diet
and hygiene can be secured, steadily disappear. I give the
third decimal dilution .
Here also, however, I suspect that any power which Iodine
may have over old indurations and suppurations of the
cervical glands is due to its destructive action, and requires
substantial doses. It was early noted that it promoted the
formation of matter in these adenopathies.
III. I have next to speak of the action of Iodine in syphilis.
Why it should have been tried in this disease, unless it were
from the analogy between its effects and those of Mercury, I
cannot say. But it was so tried ; and the results — especially
when it was given freely by Wallace of Dublin * as Iodide of
Potassium --were highly satisfactory. It is now the accepted
remedy for tertiary, as Mercury is for secondary syphilis.
That it is as Iodine that it cures, though given in combination
with potassium , appears from Dr. Guillemin's experience, who
finds the simple tincture do all that can be done by the Iodide.t
I think that there is no reason for doubting that in the
ulcerations of mucous membrane and the cutaneous syphilides
in which Iodine is useful it cures, as Mercury does, in virtue
of its power to affect the same parts and in a similar manner.
It acts here in small doses enough-a grain or two of Iodide
of Potassium , or far more minute quantities of Iodine
itself. But the benefits of largely increased dosage in the
* Lancet, 1835-6, vol. i.
Gaz. Hebd. de Méd . et de Chir ., 1865, p. 134, et seq.
1 Dr. Guillemin's doses are very small. See also Yeldham on Home
opathy in Venereal Diseases. “ I would remark , ” says Trousseau, “ that
in some circumstances certain cachexiæ , and the syphilitic among them ,
take a form identical with that ascribed by M. Rilliet to iodism . " He
then relates a case of the kind ; it was cured by iodide of potassium .
Ricord has found the last named to restore the normal number of red
globules in the blood of syphilitics. If, as with Mercury, it could be
proved to diminish the number in health, this would be very significant.
440 IODIUM .

tertiary gummatous deposits on bones and in viscera are so

great and indubitable that I think we must look now to a
different modus operandi. What this is has been discussed
by Dr. Madden, in a very interesting paper which you will
find in the twenty -sixth volume of the British Journal of
Homeopathy. He points out that these affections are of
the nature of organized new growths, which are therefore
quasi-parasitical to the body, and require parasiticides to
destroy them. The strong antiseptic power of Iodine suggests,
he thinks, that it may have such an action ; or, as seems to me
more probable, it deals with these foreign deposits as it does
with the lead or mercury it is so successful in eliminating
from the system. Either way, it must be given for such
purpose in full doses, and the indications for its use must not
be looked for in its pathogenesis.
IV . The same explanation probably applies to the virtues
of Iodine in chronic rheumatism , gout, and rheumatoid
arthritis. They are undoubted ; and in the latter obstinate
affection Iodine really seems the most hopeful remedy we
have. This is the testimony of Laségue, * of Trousseau ,* of
Fuller, t and of Horatio Wood. Full doses and local appli
cation are ordinarily required.
V. We have now passed in review the diathetic relations of
Iodine. It only remains to consider the disorders of those
parts to which it is a specific irritant, and note how far it has
proved useful in their treatment. The homeopathicity of its
action here needs no arguments.
1. Iodine is not a leading remedy in affections of the
mucous membrane of the alimentary canal, though it will
often control these—as the diarrhea of phthisis and marasmus
—when given for the diseases of which they are an accompani.
ment. Some references to its occasional uses here may be
found in the study of the drug ( by Dr. Madden and myself)
* See Trousseau's Clinical Lectures (New Syd. Soc.), iv , 430.
+ On Gout, Rheumatic Gout , fc.
 IODIUM . 441

which I mentioned when I began . I may add to these

the vomiting of pregnancy . But while thus inferior to

Arsenic as a remedy for affections of the alimentary mucous
membrane, it just as far excels the latter drug in those of
the respiratory tract . It is very useful in severe local coryza ,
where the nose is red and swollen . Kali iodidum may be
given internally, or Iodine applied by olfaction . * The latter
mode of treatment is commended by Ringer in the daily
attacks of coryza from which some people suffer, and , con
joined with the internal administration of the drug, has
proved highly beneficial in strumous ozæna . A case of
recovery of the sense of smell, lost for three years, under the
use of Iodine, is cited by Wilcox : the patient was taking the
drug for a chronic ophthalmia . In a case of profuse dark
discharge from the nose , without constitutional symptoms,
occurring in a child after exposure to the contagion of
diphtheria, when other apparently well -indicated remedies
had failed the first dilution of Kali iodidum effected a rapid
cure. Over the extension of this mucous tract to the eye
Iodine has little influence, though its constitutional action
may make it helpful in strumous ophthalmia. But on that
which penetrates the Eustachian tubes it exerts much power,
and has often proved curative in catarrhal deafness. In
affections of the larynx and trachea Iodine takes the highest
rank . Before its discovery in the ashes of burnt sponge
Hahnemann had proved that substance, and discerned its
specific laryngeal action ; so that as a remedy for catarrhal
and inflammatory affections of the part, and even for croup
itself, Spongia has long been in high repute in the homeo
pathic school. It has been with croup as with goitre :
Iodine has been suspected to have the chief credit of the
curative power of the sponge, and experiment has confirmed
the suggestion. Koch was the Coindet of this revolu.
tion ; and since his communication to the Hygea in 1841
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv , 168.
+ See a case in Monthly Hom . Review , xü, 538.
442 JODIUM .

Iodine has taken in most hands the place of Spongia

in membranous croup, the other being given only in the
catarrhal form . Dr. Elb's excellent essay on the disease,
which you will find translated in the tenth volume of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy, will tell you all that is
necessary about this piece of therapeutics. As soon as he has
satisfied himself as to the existence of true croup, he gives a
dose of Iodine, from the 2nd to the 6th decimal dilution. “ Like
the sudden subsidence of a storm , ” he writes, “ so wonder
fully quick is its action. The anxiety and imminent
suffocation and whistling cough cease as if by magic, and
the dyspnæa becomes so much diminished that we may
safely wait an hour before giving a dose of Aconite, which
speedily procures remission of the fever, with perspiration.”
He then continues the two every hour alternately as long
as there is need . Drs. Arnold and Dake bave added the
recommendation - supported by their experienceof giving
inhalations of the drug in rebellious cases.
You will ask, remembering how I have spoken in similar
terms of the action of Bromine, how we are to differentiate
between them . I can only repeat Dr. Meyhoffer's suggestion,
that constitutional prostration is the characteristic indication
for the preference of Bromine, which is thus suited to diphthe
ritic croup, while Iodine suits the sporadic and more sthenic
form . If, however, you should agree with those who think
that true croup is always connected with diphtheria, I may
mention that Dr. Kidd regards Iodine as the most important
remedy we have for the latter disease .
Before leaving the respiratory sphere, I must speak of the
use of Iodine in pulmonary phthisis. Its potent action on the
lungs, its modifying influence over scrofula, and the hectic
character of its emaciation and fever would make it from &
homeopathic point of view the most hopeful of remedies for
this disease. My own experience is that of Bähr's, that “ more
than any other remedy it effects curative results, especially if
tuberculosis is the result of scrofulosis, in the case of young
 IODIUM . 443

and robust individuals.” This means, I take it, when phthisis is

scrofulous pneumonia rather than primary tuberculosis of the
lung. Nevertheless, in a case where the severity of the con
stitutional symptoms and the deficiency of physical signs gave
me every reason to dread the presence of tubercle, Iodine
alone effected a speedy and most satisfactory cure. I am
firmly persuaded that, so far as medicines go, our best hope of
future success in phthisis lies in our knowing better how.to use
Iodine for it.
As regards the genito -urinary mucous membrane I have
only to say that Dr. Bumstead finds Kali iodidum in
ordinary doses increase urethral discharge in gleet, and that
Dr. Franklin esteems it, in the 3rd decimal dilution, highly
conducive to its cure. *
2. The action of Iodine on the serous membranes has been
little utilised in the homeopathic school ; but to it belongs, I
think, the occasional curative power of Iodide of Potassium in
hydrocephalus and hydrothorax. To it, also, I am inclined to
refer the usefulness of Iodine when locally applied or injected to
remove effusions into serous or synovial cavities. It is com
monly supposed to act here by setting up adhesive inflammation
of the walls of the sac. But Dr. Jousset has disproved this
hypothesis in the case of hydrocele, and shewn that inflam
mation is not essential, or even favourable, to the curative
process. t Iodine is found in the serous effusions of
hydrocele and hydrarthrosis when it is taken internally : to
apply or inject it is merely to intensify its influence by concen
tration , and, when the disorder is local, seems the most rational
practice.
3. I can hardly say anything definite of the power of Iodine
in cutaneous affections apart from syphilides and scrofulides.
Dr. Neligan thinks the Lodide of Potassium superior to any
other drug in these cases, and Mr. Hunt extols cod - liver
oil as the only medicine to be compared with Arsenic in its
* Science and Art of Surgery, i, 400 .
+ See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xvi, 259.
444 IODIU'M .

power over skin disease. We shall have to inquire directly

how far the power of this oil is to be ascribed to the Iodine it
contains.
4. And now as to the glands. Iodine has cured mercurial
salivation, and that of pregnancy. Pereira and Watson rank it
next to Mercury in chronic disease of the liver; and Dr. Dudgeon
once cured with it an obstinate case of jaundice in which he
suspected organic disease.* Iodine is the leading remedy for
diseases of the pancreas in the organology of Rademacher ;
and several cases of acute and chronic disease of this gland are
cited by Dr. Wilcox in which it effected a cure. You will
think of it if you ever encounter the diarrhea adiposa ; and
perhaps Dr. Herbert Nankivell's observation ,t that Iodine
enables fatty food to be digested which otherwise could not
be given, belongs to this action of the drug.
The specific influence of Iodine upon the glands of the
generative system would suggest its frequent employment in
morbid states of these glands, especially when occurring in
scrofulous and tubercular subjects. In such patients prosta
titis in the male, and amenorrhea, galactorrhoea, and leucor
rhea in the female subject have been cured by it. I speak
with more diffidence when I suggest that to such an influence
is due the dispersion of mammary, ovarian, and uterine
tumours which has sometimes been accomplished by Iodine.
It is worth noting, however, that the tumours of the uterus
which have — in Dr. Ashwell's words 1— “ melted down " under
the action of Iodine appear invariably to have originated in
the cervix, i. e. in the glandular and secreting portion of the
organ . In inflammation and induration of this part, more
over , Iodine is a remedy of tried value. Here, probably, what
has been said about strumous glands holds good ; and the
ovary seems to bear to Iodine just the same relation as the
thyroid. Ovarian dropsy (at least of the unilocular kind) is
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxii, 357.
+ Monthly Hom . Review , xvii, 632.
I See Guy's Hospital Reports, vol. i.
 IODIUM . 415

analogous to cystic bronchocele, and, like it, is far more amena

ble to the injection than to the administration of the drug .
It should be borne in mind, I think, in cases of sterility where
the strumous diathesis exists.
5. The group of symptoms I have described as constituting
the iodism of Coindet and Rilliet point to its action on the
nervous and circulatory systems, and on the blood itself.
Trousseau compares them to false chlorosis, simulating
phthisis. The tremors suggest mercurial palsy and paralysis
agitans, and perhaps chorea, in which affection , and in some
cases of paralysis, Manson has found it very useful. I often
give it with advantage in the chronic congestive vertigo of old
people. It ought to be ( perhaps in high dilution) beneficial
in insomnia , and in hypochondriasis of the kind it causes.
It may be useful in palpitation ;* and Dr. Goullon's case
suggests its power over the muscular substance of the heart,
which perhaps explains the undoubted good done by Iodide of
Potassium in internal aneurism . I have one of the innominata
now under care, in which great relief has been obtained by
the persistent use of this remedy, in grain doses twice a day ;
and it is worth noting that Dr. Neligan speaks highly of the
Biniodide of Mercury in the treatment of organic - especially
valvular - disease of the heart. The Iodine is surely the pre
potent agent in this preparation. I shall have also to speak
of Spongia as a cardiac remedy.
I have now done with Iodine — this drug which M. Sée,
re-echoing Hahnemann, calls an “ heroic but dangerous .
medicine, requiring the greatest prudence on the part of the
physician . " Here again magis venenum , magis remedium .
Iodine, so recently discovered , already stands in the front
rank of therapeutic agents ; and I know of none which
promises so much in the future.
A word before closing on the iodides. The compound
* " In a case altogether exceptional,” Trousseau writes, “ M. Rilliet has
seen palpitation cease, instead of appearing or increasing, under iodism :
.

the patient was one habitually subject to it. ”

446 IODIUM .

Iodine forms with Potassium has already come before us, and
the substitution of Sodium or Ammonium makes little differ
ence in the result . With the alkaline earths — as Barium anů
Calcium ; with the metals - as Iron , Mercury and Lead ; and
with Sulphur, Iodine forms compounds which owe their energy
mainly to their bases, though its presence gives them a some
what distinctive character and special direction . The lodide
of Carbon forms a substance quite unique, save as it corre
sponds with the sulphide of the same element, which has
already come before us. It is unknown to medicine. But of
all iodic compounds the most important is cod - liver oil
Oleum jecoris aselli. When this potent therapeutic agent
was first introduced into practice, it was a common opinion
that its peculiar virtues were due to the Iodine it contained.
To the homæopathic physician, the infinitesimal proportion
(one part in 40,000) in which the drug existed occasioned no
difficulty ; and he could point triumphantly to the perfect
homeopathicity of Iodine to most of the maladies in which
cod - liver oil was found beneficial. Of late years, however, so
much evidence has accumulated as to the importance of oily
matters in the nutritive operations, that it has become usual
among ourselves as well as in the old school to regard cod oil
as a purely dietetic agent. I cannot myself subscribe to this
conclusion . Without questioning for a moment the great
value of an easily - digested animal oil as an article of diet in
badly nourished frames, I do strongly doubt whether the
whole virtues of cod - liver oil can be ascribed to this mode of
action. When we remember that in a teaspoonful of this oil
we are administering a dose of Iodine equal to a drop and a
half of its third decimal dilution, and that we are generally
giving it in cases to which the drug is thoroughly homeo
pathic, can we doubt that it exerts a curative action ? If we
disbelieve this, we have no reason for believing in the action
of infinitesimals anywhere. Moreover, were it the oleaginous
matter per se which cures, why should all attempts to find a
substitute for the oil of fishes be so unsuccessful ? and how
 IODIUM . 447

was it that the first disease in which cod oil won its
laurels was, not scrofula or phthisis, but chronic rheumatism ?
I conclude, then, that the virtues of cod-liver oil are due, in a
great measure, to the Iodine which it contains, and that the
pathogenesy of this drug should always be borne in mind in .
our prescription of the oil . Iodine will obviously be given
best in the form of cod -liver oil where there is much wasting,
as we then introduce at one and the same time both the
specific to cure the pathological tendency, and the most suitable
pabulum wherewith to repair the material injury done to the
organism by the ravages of disease.
 LECTURE XXV .

IPECACUANHA , IRIS, KALI BICHROMICUM .

I HAVE to -day to bring first before you the famous medicine

Ipecacuanha.
From the powdered bark of the root a tincture is made by
percolation ; or (which I think better) we triturate it.
There is a pathogenesis of Ipecacuanha in the third volume
of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 146 symptoms from
Hahnemann ; 46 from 3 fellow -observers ; and 41 from 11
authors. Of the last, those of Geoffroy , Scott, and Murray
are alone to be depended on ; the rest are too impure. But
the most complete collection of the effects, physiological and
therapeutical, of the drug is that of Dr. Imbert -Gourbeyre.
It has been reprinted in a separate form (Paris: Baillière and
Son ) from L'Art Médical for 1868, where it first appeared ;
it is also translated in vols. xxvi — xxvü of the British Journal
of Homoeopathy. In one of these shapes it should be before
you in your study of the medicine ; and my remarks here will
to a large extent be a summary of and commentary on its
contents .
1. I must first speak of the relation of Ipecacuanha to
vomiting. It has long been known as a certain , though tardy
and mild, emetic ; and has been used accordingly. An inter
esting paper was furnished to the Medical Observations and
Inquiries (vol. vi) showing how small were the doses needed to
effect this purpose, from two to four grains nearly always pror.
ing sufficient. Physiological investigation has since proved
 IPECACUASHA . 449

that this action is specific, that is, it is set up when the

drug is introduced into the system otherwise than through
the stomach. But it has also proved that - unlike Tartar
emetic and A pomorphia - Ipecacuhana always, however intro
duced, excites vomiting through the stomach. Divide the pneu
mogastrics, so that their gastric extremities shall not be im .
pressionable ; and no vomiting can be set up by Ipecacuan ,
while the two other emetics act as usual. * This explains why
Ipecacuan operates so much more freely and quickly when
introduced into the stomach than when injected subcu
taneously, while exactly the opposite is true of the others.
Other investigations have shown what is the nature of the
action of the drug on the stomach. An increased production
of gastric mucus is the usual effect in man ; but the catarrhal
nature of this is shown by experiments on animals, in whom >

the hypodermic injection of emetia (the alkaloid of Ipecacuan )

causes a slight inflammation of the gastro -intestinal mucous
membrane .
The emetic action of Ipecacuanha was naturally seized upon
as a point d'appui for the application of similia similibus, and
from Hahnemann's time onwards it has been the main remedy
in the homeopathic school where vomiting had to be checked .
But it was a curious thing to see the practice adopted , small
dose and all, by the practitioners of traditional medicine.
When Dr. Ringer, in the first edition of his Manual of
Therapeutics, stated that several forms of vomiting could be
cured by drop doses of Ipecacuanha wine ; and when subse
quently his experience was echoed from all parts of the
country , it seems to me that the small end of the wedge made
an effective entrance. If this were true, there was no reason
why any other piece of homeopathic medication might not
be true ; and the tuto, cito, et jucunde of the practice was
obvious. A feeble attempt was made to evade the inference
by ascribing to Ipecacuan a " tonic effect on the sympathetic
system generally .” Under the cover of this shield cases
Practitioner, xiii, 282 ; see also St. Barth . Hosp. Reports, v and vii.
450 IPECACUANHA .

illustrative of the practice were for a time admitted into the

pages of the Practitioner, even from homeopathic sources.
But when it appeared to be successful in doses too small for
even “ increased frequency of administration ” (by no means
always present) to bring them up to an orthodox amount,
and when Tartar emetic ( to which no ingenuity could ascribe
a tonic action ) was shown to have аa similar effect, the ground
became dangerous ; and the subject was abruptly dropped.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum would never be my wish more
strongly than in the case of Anstie ; but I must regretfully
feel that in this instance prejudice was too much for his
candour.
While, therefore, the older treatises on Materia Medica
spoke of Ipecacuanha only as a means of causing vomiting,
their successors all devote some space to showing how it mas
check it. To Dr. Ringer's catalogue of the forms of the
trouble in which it is useful or useless we can mainly
subscribe. The former embraces the vomiting of pregnancy,
suckling, and menstruation , that of acute catarrh and cancer
of the stomach, of whooping - cough , of chronic alcoholism ,
and of simple debility : the latter consists of the vomiting
of infants from intolerance of milk, and that of hysteria.
But I cannot at all agree with Dr. Phillips that it is
almost solely when the vomiting is sympathetic that
Ipecacuanha is useful. That of chronic alcoholism , which
he himself specifies, is surely as much gastric as nervous.
On the contrary, I should say, the more purely sympa
thetic the vomiting is, the more it is effected by an
impression on the nervous centre of the action which does not
take the route of the stomach , the less valuable Ipecacuanha
becomes. Thus it is of no avail in vomiting from cerebral
disease. In pregnancy, where it is so useful, the stomach
itself is always more or less affected ; and even here I find
that Nux vomica , which meets the reflex nervous irritation,
materially assists its action. Hahnemann recommended it
where there is chronic disposition to vomit without bringing
 IPECACUANHA . 451

anything away ; and Dr. Guernsey thinks constant nausea

characteristic of it.
Nor is it for the vomiting only of gastric irritation that
Ipecacuan ha helps us : it goes a long way in curing the
disorder itself. In acute catarrh of the stomach , especially
in children, it wins the applause of both schools ; and in
many dyspepsiæ depending on chronic catarrh of the same
organ it is highly beneficial. Upon the intestines it acts
in the same manner . In moderate doses it causes mucous
diarrhea, with much griping, the stools being often green or
greenish yellow ; and when emetia is injected subcutaneously,
the intestines are always found inflamed . Correspondingly,
it has been used largely in the school of Hahnemann in
the mucous diarrhea of children , even when inflammatory
symptoms appear. Dr. Ringer's experience is no less
favourable. "The dysenteric diarrhea of children ," he
writes, “whether acute or chronic, will generally yield to
bourly drop doses of Ipecacuanha wine. The especial
indications for this remedy are slimy stools, green or not, and
with or without blood .” Vomiting, he says, if present is
an additional reason for giving it. It has often been found
useful in cholera nostras, and even in the cholerine which
prevails during the epidemics of the Asiatic form of the
disease . Our excellent Hindoo colleague, Dr. Mahendra
La'l Sircar, has just put on record a case of poisoning by
35 grains of the powder,* in which the symptoms ( save
for the greenish tinge of the stools) presented, as he says,
" a complete picture of cholera at the outset.” Cramps,
abdominal and general, were very marked.
This leads us to the use of Ipecacuanha in dysentery. It
was in the treatment of this disease, so prevalent at the end
of the seventeenth century, that it first won its spurs ; so that
it became known as the “ radix anti-dysenterica." But the
practice ere long fell into neglect and disuse, and Hahnemann
could speak of it in his day as abandoned. It has been
* Calcutta Journal of Medicine, vii, 447 .
452 IPECACUANHA .

revived in our own by means of a different mode of adminis

tration. Formerly an infusion was used ; but now the drug
is given in powder, in a single full dose of twenty or thirty
grains. By rest and a little laudanum this is prevailed upon
to keep down ; and then the most beneficial results appear.
“ The tormina and tenesmus," writes Dr. Maclean ,*
“subside ; the motions quickly become feculent; blood and
slime disappear ; and often after a profuse action of the skin
the patient falls into a natural sleep and awakes refreshed.”
A second dose is sometimes required ; but rarely a third.
This Ipecacuanha treatment of dysentery is now prevalent
throughout India ; and is most highly esteemed .
Is it homeopathy ? Hahnemann argued that Ipecacuanha
was incapable of curing the essential symptoms of dysentery,
since it was incapable of producing similar ones in healthy
persons. " Incapable " is a perilous word to use in patho
genesy ; and subsequent experiment has shown that Ipeca
cuanha can inflame the intestines, so that its relation to
dysentery might fairly be 'argued to be that of similarity.t
But I am not sure whether we can claim the present practice
for our method. The large dose required, and the advantage
gained by giving it in substance, point to a local action of the
drug, which indeed (as Dr. Noel de Mussy has pointed out )I
is often given with advantage in injection. It seems to cause
a transpiration of the intestinal mucous membrane analogous
to that seen on the skin, and so to promote the resolution of
the disease. Homeopathic practitioners have not found it
very efficacious in their small doses, save as an adjunct to
other remedies. Hahnemann admits that it may diminish the
quantity of blood , and relieve the tormina, of the affection ;
as to these symptoms it is quite homeopathic. But there is
another feature of dysentery which Ipecacuanha, though it
has never caused it, may well relieve. I mean the tenesmus.
* Reynolds' System of Medicine, vol i, art. Dysentery.
+ See London Medical Record , iii, 59.
I Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiii, 752.
 IPECACUANHA . 453

This is an action very analogous to the vomiting we have seen

and the cough we shall soon see caused by the drug ; and like
these it may be quieted by it, as Teste has affirmed .
2. We come now to the action of Ipecacuanha on the
respiratory organs. When these receive it by inhalation as
those by ingestion a similar train of phenomena is wont to
appear. Irritation of the mucous membrane is set up - in
creased secretion going on to catarrhal inflammation. But
more marked than this, and often out of all proportion to it,
is the involvement of the extremities of the incident nerves .
Continual sneezing, spasmodic cough, and especially dyspnea
of asthmatic kind, are the sufferings of those who have the
misfortune to be susceptible to Ipecacuanha whenever they are
exposed to its emanations.
Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre has collected numerous instances of
this effect of the drug. It is of the contingent order, only
appearing in certain persons. But with them it results omni
dosi. They may be at the top of the house, while Ipecacuanha
is being powdered on the basement: yet ere long they will
feel the influence of their enemy. Sometimes their conjunc
tival and Schneiderian membranes are most affected ; the eyes
are reddened , smart, and water, and there is copious defluxion
from the nose, with incessant sneezing. More commonly the
influence is felt lower down, in dyspnea, wheezing, and
cough, ending in profuse mucous expectoration. They suffer
like the subjects of hay -fever and -asthma ; only the irritant is
different.
This being so, Ipecacuanha should play an important part
in the disorders of the respiratory apparatus ; and it does so
in both schools of medicine. In coryza it should be given
where sneezing is very troublesome. In hay -fever it does all
that a palliative can do, though nothing seems really curative
save destruction of the living matter which , in the form of
pollen, Mr. Blackley has demonstrated to be its cause. It is
of great service in croup and in pertussis. Its repute as an
emetic in these disorders is probably due to its dynamic pro
30
454 IPECACUANHA .

perties. For croup M. Teste strongly recommends the

alternation of Ipecacuanha with Bryonia . There is certainly
a spasmodic as well as an inflammatory element in most cases
of croup ; and as Bryonia, which we have seen to have the
power of setting up membranous inflammation of the air .
passages, controls the latter, Ipecacuanha may well help by
its influence on the former . In whooping -cough I have the
utmost confidence in it as long as, or whenever, catarrhal
symptoms are present. When the cough is pure spasm
Drosera , Corallia , or Cuprum is preferable. It is thus (often
in alternation with Aconite) the usual remedy for the malady in
its first two or three weeks, and gives unequivocal relief. In
simple spasmodic coughs resembling pertussis, with much
retching and mucous expectoration , Ipecacuanha is often
rapidly curative . It is hardly suited to pure spasmodic asthma,
where, if it relieves the paroxysm , it must do so as any other
nauseant would , by inducing general relaxation. Nor has it
power over acute bronchitis. But in bronchitic asthma its use
is most beneficial, in small frequent doses during the attack,
and at longer intervals subsequently. And there are cases of
bronchitis which are half asthma, neuroses as much as phlo
goses ; and here Ipecacuanha acts beautifully. I have put
one such case on record in the fifth volume of the Annals of
the British Homeopathic Society ( p. 199) .
Dr. Ringer has lately extended the influence of Ipecacuan
over the disorders of respiration, by introducing the wine
into the chest in fine spray. By this means he is able greatly
to relieve and even to cure chronic cases of winter -cough,
where the bronchial membrane is always engorged , and the
incident nerves in continual excitement. The success he has
obtained should encourage us to repeat the experiment, and
perhaps to use the drug in this form in hay -fever and in the
asthmatic paroxysm . It is the more rational so to do, as we have
but feeble evidence of the power of Ipecacuan to cause re
spiratory troubles through the stomach , whereas, when inhaled ,
it does so as we have seen in the minutest dose.
 IPECACUANHA . 455

I think that, both in the digestive apparatus and in the

respiratory organs, the condition indicating Ipecacuanba may
be defined as " a moderate inflammatory irritation of the
mucous surface, resulting, through a reflex excitation conveyed
by the incident nerves of the part, in vigorous expulsive
muscular movements .”
3. I have now to speak of the use of Ipecacuanha in
hæmorrhages. Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre has collected various
testimonies to its value here, and has convincingly shown it
to be homeopathic in its modus operandi. Several authors
have seen it produce epistaxis and hæmoptysis in connection
with its respiratory troubles; and in an observation of asthma
caused by its emanations, and lasting some days, it is noted
that menstruation appeared prematurely, and not only the
sputa, but also the stools and urine were sometimes tinged
with blood. It is now forgotten in ordinary practice ; but
among homeopathists it holds high rank as a remedy in in
testinal hæmorrhage, in hæmoptysis, menorrhagia and me
trorrhagia, and hæmatemesis. The presence also of blood in
the ejecta is always held to strengthen the indications for it in
vomiting, dysentery, and pertussis.
4. What amount of direct action Ipecacuan exerts on the
nervous system in health is uncertain . But it has found an
occasional place in the treatment of neurotic affections in both
schools of medicine, as may be seen from Dr. Imbert-Gour
beyre’s collection . I can speak only of cerebro-spinal menin
gitis and of intermittent fever. In an epidemic of the former
disease occurring at Avignon in 1846-7, Dr. Bechet was led
to Ipecacuan as the medicine most similar to the symptoms
present; and he gave it ( in themother tincture) in every case
with such great relative success that it was appropriated (of
course without acknowledgment) by the practitioners of the
old school in the place, and vaunted as a specific .* In ague
it has long been in esteem as an emetic ; but Sauret at least
has published an obstinate case in which it cured without
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xi , 305.
456 IRIS VERSICOLOR .

causing nausea and vomiting. Roux observed , in the same

journal, that such facts were long since known in the school
of Hahnemann . The presence of much gastric derangement,
and vomiting during the paroxysms, have always been held
to indicate it, also supervention of the fit in the evening or
night ; but Jahr says that he always commences with it in
the treatment of ague unless some other remedy is distinctly
indicated, and that by pursuing this course he has cured many
cases by the first prescription. Bähr thinks its place to be in
intermittents when epidemic in a district ordinarily non
malarious. If in any of these visitations it cures the first case ,
it will cure all the rest .
Among the miscellaneous facts adduced by Dr. Imbert
Gourbeyre in his exhaustive collection is one where intense pain,
with profuse lachrymation, congestion of the eyes, and photo
phobia going on to blindness in one eye, and appearance of
iridescent rings of fire before the other, occurred three times
from exposure to the dust of Ipecacuanha. He gives also a
case of choroiditis, where coloured haloes surrounded all
bright objects, rapidly removed by the medicine in medium
dilutions.
The analogues of Ipecacuanha are Antimonium tartaricum
and Arsenicum .
The first and second decimal triturations, and the first
decimal dilution, answer well for all the homeopathic appli
cations of Ipecacuanha. The drop doses of the wine made
so fashionable by Dr. Ringer are about equal to a drop and
a half of our lx .

I come now to a plant which, though not peculiar to the

American continent, has been made known as a medicine by
American practitioners. It is the common blue -flag,
Iris versicolor.
A tincture is prepared from the root.
Iris has been well proved, by Drs. Burt, Holcombe, Row
land, and three others. The record of their experiments is
 IRIS VERSICOLOR . 457
contained in the second edition of Dr. Hale's New Remedies,
and in the fourth edition you can read a full account of the
extensive clinical experience which has been obtained with it.
Iris has long had a reputation among those who employ the
indigenous plants of America as a very active emetic and
purgative, and as an excitant of the salivary and biliary
secretions. Our provings, while they agree with this descrip
tion, both enlarge and precisionise it. Enlarge -- for they
show that the pancreas is irritated as much as or more than
the salivary glands and liver. This is shown by the continual
burning felt in this region by one of the provers, who at the
same time was passing frequent watery evacuations; and by
the highly congested state of the organ in animals poisoned
by Iris. And precisionise,-for they indicate the vomiting
and diarrhea of Iris to be the result of hypersecretion along
the alimentary tract, and that the morbid condition set up
has little tendency to run on to inflammation. The vomiting
is often acid ; and the purging is accompanied by severe colic
and burning in the rectum . With the salivation there is a
thick and flat, or even greasy taste in the whole mouth, but
no fætor . Besides these effects of the drug, it has produced
severe facial neuralgia on the right side, and vesiculo -pustular
eruptions.
The gastro - intestinal symptoms of Iris were the first to be
turned to account in homøopathic practice. Dr. Kitchen
called attention to them in the North American Journal of
Homeopathy in 1851. He stated that he found the drug of
eminent value in many forms of vomiting and diarrhoea,
several of which he instanced and illustrated from practice.
The two definite maladies in which, consequent upon his
statements, Iris has achieved a reputation are cholera nostras
and sick headache. To the first the drug is completely
homeopathic, and many testimonies from America coincide
with those of Dr. Lade and myself in this country in warrant
of its striking efficacy. About cholera infantum the evidence
is more conflicting. I have myself been disappointed with it
 458 KALI BICHROMICUM .

in this disorder : the vomiting is often checked by the Iris,

but the purging rarely. Cholera infantum is not so charac
teristically bilious as is the autumnal attack to which adults
are liable. As regards " sick headache ,” - in true migraine,
of nervous origin, Iris will do nothing more than stay the
vomiting, though that is something. But there is a variety
of this affection which is evidently of gastro -hepatic origin.
Here Iris will speedily remove the attacks, and by its con
tinued use will often obviate their recurrence . A recent
American writer says that it rarely fails when the headache is
preceded by a film before the eyes ; but that, when this
symptom is absent, it will do little.
Iris has also cured idiopathic and mercurial salivation, vesi
culo- pustular eruptions, facial neuralgia , and sthenic seminal
emissions. It should be thought of in acute affections of the
pancreas.
The analogues of Iris are Antimonium tartaricum , Colchicum,
Ipecacuanha, Mercurius, and Podophyllum .
The low dilutions only have been used : I myself have
:

always employed the first decimal.

I have now to introduce you to a salt which, known only
as a caustic in the old school, has through physiological
proving become among homeopathists a widely used and
most valued remedy. It is the bichromate of potash,
Kali bichromicum .
It is prepared by trituration or aqueous solution up to the
third potency.
This substance was first proved in England , under the
superintendence of Dr. Drysdale, on 11 men and 5 women .
The results, with experiments on animals and observations on
the workmen engaged in its preparation, were published by
him in the British Journal of Homeopathy for 1844. In
1845 the Austrian Society selected the drug for proving,
which they carried out on 12 men and 2 women , publishing
the results in their journal for 1847. Dr. Arneth , who con
 KALI BICHROMICUM . 459

ducted the proving and undertook the publication, has

embodied in his article all that was known upon the subject
up to that date. Of these ample materials Dr. Drysdale has
constructed the arrangement of the drug which appears in the
first part of the Hahnemann Materia Medica . Numerous
clinical cases are appended there; and a series of others has
been furnished by the same physician to the fifteenth volume
of the British Journal of Homeopathy.
We have thus in Kali bichromicum a fully proved and
largely tried medicine. As it may be quite strange to many
of my hearers, I must expound it ab initio.
Dr. Drysdale well characterises it as a pure irritant to the
organic tissues. ” Comparing it with Arsenic, we observe that
neurotic, hæmatic, and myotic influences are altogether
wanting ; but its sphere of tissue -irritation is wider, omitting
indeed the serous membranes, but extending beyond the
mucous membranes and the skin to the fibrous tissues on the
one hand, and to many of the glands on the other. I will
endeavour to describe its physiological actions under these
headings.
1. The action of Kali bichromicum on the mucous mem
branes is as marked as that of Arsenic and of Tartar emetic .
It causes a morbid increase in the quantity of mucus formed,
which mucus sometimes is tough and stringy, and sometimes
degenerates into pus. Higher grades of the inflammatory
process are seen in the respiratory mucous membrane, and
(when the poison has been swallowed ) along the alimentary
tract. In the former region, false membranes have been
formed ; in the latter, the tendency is towards ulceration . The
portions of the mucous tracts chiefly affected are the mouth,
throat, cardiac portion of the stomach, duodenum and jejunum ,
and rectuml ; and the whole respiratory membrane, includ .
ing the conjunctiva. These toxicological actions are well pic
tured in the physiological provings. The provers have sore and
injected fauces ; sour eructations and heartburn , slow di
gestion , bitter taste, nausea and vomiting, with thickly
460 KALI BICHROMICCM .

coated tongue ; dysenteric purging ; coryza , hoarseness, and

cough.
2. The action of Kali bichromicum on the skin , like that of
Croton and Tartar emetic, is most fully displayed as the
result of its external application ; although, as also with them ,
the effect is specific, and may appear under other circum
stances. In the account of the English proving given in the
British Journal of Homeopathy you will find some coloured
engravings of the effects of the poison upon the skin .
Papules, pustules, and ulcers are the most characteristic
forms: the ulcers have hard bases and overhanging edges,
are deep and generally dry.
3. The glands chiefly affected by Kali bichromicum are the
liver and the kidneys. On the former its action is very
marked . Here is a group of symptoms occurring in one
prover :-"aching for some days in the right hypochondrium ;
scanty, pale, clay - coloured stools, sometimes twice a day;
metallic taste, fætid breath, and confusion in the head." In
animals poisoned by it, the liver is found congested, enlarged,
friable, of a dark reddish-brown colour, but presenting on its
surface whitisb -yellow spots extending into its substance, of
soft consistence, and slightly depressed. The kidneys are also
found intensely congested, the tubular portion softened and
undistinguishable from the rest, and the urine either purulent
or altogether suppressed.
4. The fibrous tissues are much irritated , as shown by the
marked tearing pains experienced by the provers, especially
about the joints. Still more striking is the effect upon the
periosteum , which manifests not only pain at certain spots,
but its characteristic hard swellings. These symptoms are
observed especially in the parietal, malar, and maxillary bones,
and in the tibia. I see no evidence that Kali bichromicum
influences the bones themselves ; but its curious effects upon
the nasal septum show a decided power of destroying the
cartilages. Dr. Drysdale thus describes what happens to the
workers in chrome. “ For the first days there is discharge of
 KALI BICHROMICUM . 461

clear water from the nose, with sneezing, chiefly on going

into the open air ; then soreness and redness of the nose,
with sensation of a fætid smell. Then they have great pain
and tenderness, most at the junction of the cartilage, and the
septum ulcerates quite through, while the nose becomes
obstructed by the repeated formation of hard elastic plugs
( called by the workmen clinkers ). Finally, the membrane
loses its sensibility and remains dry , with the septum gone,
and frequently loss of smell for years."
The pathogenetic effects I have now described are faithfully
represented in the clinical use of the drug. Kali bichromicum
is of no service in idiopathic nervous affections, or in toxæmic
fevers. The apparent exception of supra -orbital neuralgia,
which it has often cured (especially when occurring on the
left side ), is probably not a real one ; as this is the neuralgia
most frequently induced by gastric derangement. Two
leading forms of cachexia, however, are prominently pictured
in its pathogenesis, viz., syphilis and chronic rheumatism .
I. Of syphilis Dr. Drysdale writes :- -" the resemblance in
many respects between the action of this medicine and that of
the syphilitic virus, and also its analogy to Mercury, would
lead us to hope that we may find in it another remedy for
that disease . Though we would not place any weight on such
a merely superficial resemblance, yet we cannot refrain from
noticing the likeness that the chrome ulcer when healed
presents to the indurated chancre. A more correct way of
judging of the resemblance is in the further development of the
constitutional symptoms. We have in this remedy the rash
on the skin ; then the sore throat, which has been mistaken
for syphilitic ; then the periosteal pains ; then the rheuma
tism ; and lastly the diseases of the skin , chiefly of the pus
tular character, which have the hard dark scab, and leave the
depressed cicatrix." Experience has confirmed the hope here
expressed, as will be seen in the remarks I shall make upon
its curative power over affections of the throat, eye, skin and
periosteum .
462 KALI BICHROMICUM .

II. The rheumatoid pains induced by Kali bichromicum

are so numerous and characteristic, that it can hardly fail to
take its place as a remedy for rheumatic affections. Expe.
rience has here also confirmed the indications of pathogenesy.
It is especially on the middle ground between rheumatism
and syphilis — in periosteal and syphilitic rheumatism - that
Kali bichromicum plays so distinguished a part. It will be
seen , however, that its action is by no means limited to cases
such as this. The rheumatism calling for Kali bichromicum
is chronic, and of the “ cold ” variety.
Let us now follow the curative action of the drug along
the road we have already traversed in describing its patho
genetic effects.
1. In chronic catarrh and ulcerations of the alimentary
mucous membrane Kali bichromicum is often our very best
medicine. The common chronic ulcer of the pharynx rapidly
heals under its action. I agree also with Drs. Watzke and
Russell in rating it very highly as a remedy for syphilitic sore
throat. It will not, I believe, arrest the destructive ulcera
tion sometimes set up (requiring Mercury or Iodine ); but
will subdue chronic inflammation and heal up superficial
ulcers very effectually. Then it is very useful in dyspepsia
and vomiting from chronic gastric catarrh, where the tongue
has a thick yellowish coat, differing herein from the white coat
of Antimonium crudum . Mr. Clifton has contributed some
valuable indications for the medicine here.* He agrees with
Dr. Lippe (of whose remarks I shall speak hereafter) that it
is especially useful in the dyspepsia of beer -drinkers, and
where weight (not pain ) is complained of after food . He
notes that under the rough yellow fur of the tongue the
surface of the organ is red ; and he confirms the general
experience of alternation of gastric sufferings with rheumatism
being characteristic of the drug. Kali bichromicum is hardly
less useful in healing the round ulcer of the stomach, and
those of the duodenum resulting from burns ; and in chronic
* Monthly Hom . Review , xvii, 154.
 KALI BICHROMICUM. 463

diarrhea from intestinal ulceration it vies with Mercurius

corrosivus, and has effected some brilliant cures .
Still more striking is the power of this remedy in affections
of the respiratory mucous membrane. In acute coryza , and
in catarrh of larynx, trachea , and bronchi, such as occurs in
influenza, it is often rapidly curative ; especially (I think)
when the digestive mucous membrane is simultaneously in
volved . There is also a large accumulation of evidence
tending to show that it is a potent remedy for true mem
branous croup, whether diphtheritic or apparently primary.
I cannot yet compare it with Iodine and Bromine here. It is,
however, more especially in the chronic affections of the
respiratory tract that Kali bichromicum is efficacious. The
great indication for it in these is the tough, tenacious, glutinous
character of the expectoration, which may often be drawn out
in long strings. Dr. Meyhoffer esteems it highly in chronic
laryngeal catarrh , and when bronchitis lingers long in a sub
acute condition . He administers it by inhalation as well as
internally. It might be useful in ulceration of the larynx,
syphilitic or simple.
The lining membrane of the nose, and its offset to the eyes,
is therapeutically as well as physiologically a special seat of
the action of Kali bichromicum . It is very good for chronic
coryza, where the discharge is thick, yellow , and glutinous, and
the nose tender. Used locally as well, it has cured polypus
narium in many instances. * It is worthy of trial in ozæna
after the same manner . The internal use of the drug alone
I have never seen curative of this disease ; though Mr. Lord
found it very successful in horses, with whom it is a frequent
See one in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 356. Dr. Ransford has com
municated ( Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv , 304) a case which he calls
“ malignant ulceration of the nose,” cured by the internal use of the
bichromate . I should rather have called it polypus, possibly malignant.
Dr. Ransford has found fault with this criticism ( Ibid ., xxxii, 651) ; but
his only reply is to repeat testimonies as to the malignancy of the affec
tion. This I do not question : I only submit that it was a polypoid growth
rather than an ulcerative process.
461 KALI BICHROMICUM .

occurrence . In acute glanders affecting these subjects Mr.

Moore has found it curative ; and the suppurating nostrils
and pustular skin of the disease plainly indicate it, at ang
rate in alternation with the Arsenicum or Lachesis required
by the constitutional condition. In the sphere of the eyes
Kali bichromicum stands high among the remedies for catarrhal
and strumous ophthalmia ; and its action on the fibrous
structures has enabled it to cure even rheumatic and syphilitic
inflammations of the ball. It is especially useful in catarrho.
rheumatic ophthalmia.
The other uses of the drug may be more briefly passed
over.
2. It has often been used with great advantage in pustular
eruptions; and is a valuable remedy, externally as well as
internally used, for ulcers on the legs. Dr. Edward Blake
has lately + communicated some interesting experience with
it in lupus non-exedens, which he has several times succeeded
in curing with the 5th decimal attenuation .
3. Kali bichromicum is a decided hepatic medicine, much
resembling Mercurius. Dull pain in the right hypochondrium ,
especially when limited to a small spot, and whitish stools,
are indications for its use. Its action on the kidneys has
led to its use in the suppression of urine which sometimes
follows upon Asiatic cholera ; and so far with apparent
success .

4. The action of Kali bichromicum upon fibrous tissue has

led to its successful use in a number of local rheumatisms,
and such - like maladies. In Dr. Drysdale's article you will
find cases of rheumatic headache, of lumbago and sciatica,
and of periostitis, which have been very satisfactorily cured
by it.
Two of our American colleagues, Drs. Lippe and Kitchen,
have within the last few years written upon Kali bichromicum .
The concurrence of their experience is interesting, as the
former uses the higher infinitesimals while the latter gives
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxii, 643 .
 KALI BICHROMICUM . 465

semi-material doses. Dr. Lippe compares its eruption to that

of measles, and says that in this disease the cough and ex
pectoration are often such as to indicate the drug. Dr.
Kitchen mainly confirms our experience with it in chronic
affections of the respiratory tract.
Hepar sulphuris, Kali iodidum, and the mercurial preparations
are the medicines which have most analogy to the general
action of Kali bichromicum . In its effects on the mucous mem
branes and skin it resembles also Arsenic and Tartar emetic.
Spongia, Iodine, and Bromine act like it upon the larynx and
trachea ; Mercurius on the liver ; andMezereum and Phytolacca
on the periosteum .
I recommend by way of dose the first six dilutions. The
3rd is most commonly used, except in syphilis, where the lowest
potencies of this salt and of the neutral chromate have been em
ployed with most benefit. In acute affections, however, I nearly
always prefer the 6th. For external use, as to ulcers, one
grain of the pure salt to eight ounces of water will be found
quite strong enough.
 LECTURE XXVI.

KALI CARBONICUM, CHLORICUM , NITRICUM , AND PERMANGA

NICUM ; KALMIA , KREASOTE , LACTUCA .

Of the compounds of Potassium we have already studied

the iodide, the bromide, and the bichromate ; and free potash
itself has come before us under the name of Causticum . We
have now to consider the remaining drugs of this order which
we use in homeopathic practice.
The first of these is the carbonate ,
Kali carbonicum .
It is prepared by solution in distilled water, or by tritu.
ration .
Hahnemann published a 'proving of Kali carbonicum in
the first edition of the Chronic Diseases, containing 938
symptoms, a good many of which were contributed by Rummel
and von Gersdorff. In the second edition the list has swollen
to 1650, a few of the additions being Hartlaub's and Goullon's,
but most of them coming from Nenning.
The carbonate of potash is not credited with any specific
action of its own in old - school therapeutics ; but is classed
with the acetate, citrate, and other vegetable salts of the alkali.
The only exception is whooping-cough, where it has some
reputation. This — as with cochineal - has been sustained
in homeopathic practice : von Bönninghausen thought it
specially indicated where there was much puffiness of the
eyelids present. It is in affections of the respiratory organs
that it has found its chief use . Dr. Bayes commends it
 KALI CARBONICUM. 467

in ulceration of the nostrils ; and in a series of cases of ozäna

lately published by Dr. S. C. Jones, in the American Journal
of Homeopathic Materia Medica ,** Kali carbonicum was the
remedy most frequently successful. Dr. Drury recommends
it in cough from relaxed uvula.f Hahnemann says— “ it is
rarely that ulcerative pulmonary phthisis can be cured with
out this antipsoric," and the suggestion has been generally
carried out and substantiated by his disciples. It seems
agreed that the chief indication for it is — as with Stannum
profuse purulent expectoration, but also — which is peculiar to
it-much pain in the walls of the chest. It will so often
remove these pains, and the pains themselves are so frequently
pleuritic in nature, that it has come to be thought that Kali
carbonicum is a true remedy for pleurisy, and not only when
occurring in connection with phthisis. I suspect that it is
only when the pleuræ are affected by extension from the lungs
that it proves useful, and that the “ phthisis ” in which it has
been beneficial is pneumonic rather than tubercular.
Another specific action of Kali carbonicum is that which it
exerts upon the ovario - uterine system . Hahnemann com
mends it in suppression of the menses , or when these delay in
making their first appearance at the time of puberty ; and to
such negative conditions of the periodic function it has
generally been considered applicable. But Dr. H. Goullon
has of late commended it to us as no less valuable in menor
rhagia . It is spoken of very highly in Noack and Trinks'
Handbuch for aching in the back in pregnant women (an ex
perience I have often confirmed ), and for the effects of want
of care after miscarriage and childbirth . 1
Besides these more defined uses of Kali carbonicum , it is
a medicine which not unfrequently comes into play in the
treatment of complex cases of chronic disease. When the
symptoms present are, on consulting our repertories, found in
Oct. and Nov., 1875.
+ Annals, iv, 543 .
See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., XXV, 515.
468 KALI CARBONICUM .

its pathogenesis, we may generally use it - preferably in the

higher dilutions - with good hope of benefit. A good many
such cases have been at various times contributed to the
Allgemeine homöopathische Zeitung by Dr. Schelling, who is
an enthusiast for the medicine. Dr. Guernsey considers the
sharp, stitching, jerking pains we have seen it removing from
the walls of the chest an indication for its employment generally
It will be seen from this that Causticum is not so close an
analogue of Kali carbonicum as their chemical relationship
would suggest. Natrum muriaticum and Stannum are perhaps
the medicines which most resemble it.
As Kali carbonicum was used by the earlier Hahneman .
nians much more than it is now, I should have supposed that
the higher dilutions were the most efficacious. Dr. Clotar
Müller, however, writes :-"as long as I employed this medi
cine in 6 or 30, I saw little or no benefit. But since I have
for many years, by Dr. Gruber's advice, given it in 1 and 2, I
have seen better results, especially in some cases of pul.
monary tuberculosis.” Dr. Bayes, also, seems quite satisfied
with the third and lower potencies.
Before passing to other salts of potash which have an in
dividuality of their own, I would mention that the presence
of this substance as a natural constituent of the body has
given it a place among Dr. Schüssler's “tissue-remedies."
He uses the chloride, phosphate, and sulphate (Kali muria
ticum, phosphoricum , sulphuricum ) ; and thinks the first of
great value in croupous inflammations of mucous membrane
and severe affections of the skin ; the third in catarrhs and
superficial disorders of the same parts ; and the second in
nervous debility and septic conditions of the blood . I mention
these points, though Dr. Schüssler's structure seems to me
much founded on guess-work. The large proportion of potash
normally present in muscle is the only fact of the kind which
I should regard as practically significant.
We come now to the chlorate of potash,
 KALI CHLORICUM . 469

Kali chloricum ,
which also is prepared by trituration or aqueous solution.
A proving of Kali chloricum was published in the sixteenth
volume of Stapf's Archiv, by Professor Martin of Jena. Eleven
persons took part in it, using the crude drug.
The chlorate of potash was found by Stevens, when taken
internally, to give the venous blood an arterial hue ; and the
same result was obtained by O'Shaughnessy when he injected
it into the vessels of animals. Taking this in connection with
the large amount of oxygen it contains, and the readiness
with which it parts with it, the salt was supposed to be a
means of conveying oxygen to the blood and tissues ; and
was given accordingly in scorbutic conditions, and in scarlet
and cther adynamic fevers and diphtheria. This theory is
now considered invalid , as the salt is found unchanged in the
urine . But practical men seem no less to believe in its power
of improving cachectic states of the system ; and give it ac
cordingly in such diseases as syphilis, cancer,* and phthisis
where the general condition is of this nature. Dr. Charles
Drysdale and Mr. Allingham treat infantile syphilis with this
medicine alone, and with excellent results ;t Drs. Cotton and
Chambers find it very beneficial in phthisis occurring in pa
tients of broken-down constitutions. I venture to suggest that
the agent of these effects is not the oxygen of the drug, but
the chlorine. The liberation of this gas when hydrochloric
acid is applied to the salt is well known, and it finds plenty of
this acid in the stomach . Chlorine water, prepared by mixing
the two in aqueous solution before administration, is in the
same repute as chlorate of potash in acute disease, and might
have like effects in chronic. This view is further supported
by the deodorizing influence of the chlorate when applied in
solution, which is well known, but nowhere better illustrated
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxv, 518.
+ Treatment of Syphilis without Mercury, (1st ed .), pp. 130—132.
31
470 KALI CHLORICUM .

than in a paper by Mr. Evan Fraser, in the eighteenth volume

of the British Journal of Homeopathy. It is far more likely
that chlorine is at work here than oxygen , for the foul sur
faces are already freely exposed to the latter element. The small
quantity required for this purpose, moreover - Mr. Fraser
finds ten grains to a pint of sufficient strength -- quite corre
sponds with the fact that the larger part of the doses ordinarily
given passes out unchanged in the urine. The decomposition
of a very small quantity would liberate chlorine enough to do
plenty of work .
However, whether it be chlorine or oxygen by which the salt
influences cachectic conditions, the practice seems to belong
to iatro -chemistry rather than to dynamism and homo
pathy. But we can justly claim for the latter a still better
established use of chlorate of potash — its power over stomatitis.
I will state this in the words of Dr. Ringer. “ It is of signal
service in mercurial and simple salivation, in ulcerative sto
matitis and aphthæ . It is particularly useful in ulceration of
the edges of the gums. The influence of the chlorate on this
form of ulceration is almost magical : in one or two days it
cleans the dirty -looking sores, and heals them in a day or two
more .
It is said to cure follicular and phagedenic ulceration
like a charm . ” Let me now read you a case reported in the
Medical Times and Gazette for May 22nd, 1858. A child had been
taking from March 16th to May 18th three times daily at first
ten and then five grains of the salt for strumous ophthalmia.
“ On May 18th she came with a very sore mouth. The saliva
dripped from her lips, there were numerous follicular ulcers
on the tongue and inside of lips, and one large one occupied a
surface the size of a shilling on the back part of the dorsum of
the tongue. The salivary glands were enlarged and tender,
and the mouth full of saliva, although the ptyalism was not
extreme nor were the gums sore. In this latter respect and
in the existence of the larger ulcers on the tongue, the
stomatitis differed from that caused by mercury.” Nor is this
an isolated occurrence. Mr. Hutchinson mentions it as a
 KALI CHLORICUM. 471

curious fact that chlorate of potash causes a form of stomatitis

very similar to that which it cures : * Stevens says that it
reddens the gums even more readily than mercury ; and sali
vation is ascribed to it by several writers. It is eliminated
by this secretion as freely as by the urine.
I hardly know whether Kali chloricum is as much used in
the homeopathic treatment of affections of the mouth as it
deserves to be. I never require any other medicine for simple
stomatitis — that exudative inflammation of the buccal mucous
membrane which the French call “ muguet. ” I have lately
found it very beneficial in one of those rare cases of epitheliaľ
degeneration of the mucous membrane of the mouth which
Paget has described as often forerunning cancer, and an
instance of which Dr. Cooper has mentioned as cured by him
with Muriatic acid. In my case I gave that medicine with
little effect. Mr. Fraser thinks that Kali chloricum has a
specific power over ulceration in this region, and gives a
good case where the process in the throat of a syphilitic patient
was arrested by it.
The pathogenesis may possibly guide us to further uses of
the salt. Dr. Drysdale has recordedt a case of facial paralysis,
beginning with face -ache, in which a rapid cure was effected
by the first decimal - trituration of Kali chloricum after the
failure of Belladonna and Rhus . He was led to the medicine,
not by the paralysis, which it has not, but by the presence of
tenderness on touch or pressure of the affected side, which is
prominent among its symptoms.
In its action on the mouth Kali chloricum has for analogues
Mercury, Iodine, Nitric and Muriatic acid, and Iris.
The first decimal trituration has been that which I have
always used.
The third salt of Potash which comes before us to -day is
the nitrate the saltpetre or nitre of common parlance
* Lancet, March 13, 1858.
† Brit. Journ ., XXV, p. 316.
472 KALI NITRICUM .

Kali nitricum .
The nitre of the shops, dissolved in hot water and deposited
in crystals as it cools, is triturated for our use .
Nitre is one of the best-proved medicines we have. The
pathogenesis in the second edition of the Chronic Diseases
contains 588 symptoms from Schreter, Tietze, and Nenning
( very few being from Hahnemann ), and 122 from authors. A
second pathogenesis, obtained by ten persons from good.
sized doses of the first trituration, was published in the
Archiv, and is translated in the first volume of the Riérue
de la Matière Médicale specifique. Jörg and eight pupils, and
Löffler with four associates, have also contributed to its
proving, besides Alexander of old ; and numerous cases of
poisoning with the salt are related in the Révue (p. 336) and
by Hempel.
Before I practised homeopathically, Nitre was a very
favourite remedy of mine in the febrile affections of
childhood . I supposed it to act chemically on the hot and
hyperinotic blood, and dynamically on the excited circulation.
I see no reason for supposing that I was wrong. Hahnemann
says that “ inasmuch as the production of cold in the system
is the primary effect of Nitrum , its action in inflammatory
fevers must be palliative only.” It is so ; but in these 1

ephemeral affections a palliative answers much the same

purposes as a curative, as Hahnemann himself has said
in reference to Opium. I have better remedies now ; but I
remember with affection my formerly used Nitre.
I confess, moreover, that I have not found a place for it in
my new therapeutics ; nor, it would seem , have others in our
school . There is little trace of its use in homeopathic
literature : Bayes and Teste omit it altogether, and Hempel
and Espanet give but theoretical indications for its emplog
ment. All I can do, therefore, is to tell you what has been
ascertained as to its physiological action.
 KALI NITRICUM . 473

Nitre shows the general properties which are now recognised

as belonging to the salts of potash : it paralyses the spinal
cord and the heart, arresting the action of the latter in diastole.
This effect - seen best in experiments on animals — is pretty
obvious in the poisonings and provings. It further acts like
the alkalies generally on the blood, exerting there a spoliative
and antiplastic influence . This was well exhibited in the
provings of Löffler, where the blood was examined ; the
general symptoms of anæmia were fully developed. It is,
moreover, an undoubted diuretic. The irritant influence on
the kidneys suggested herein is also manifested elsewhere,-in
poisonings by gastro -enteritis,and in provings by irritation of
the respiratory mucous membrane ( including the conjunctiva ),
the testicle and epididymis, the joints, and ( in one instance) the
salivary glands. There was often much pyrexia. In one case
of poisoning there was acute ædema of the whole body ; in
another, after recovery from the first effects, chorea and great
irritability of temper.
From these facts therapeutic indications may yet be drawn.
Some hints, moreover, for dynamic uses of the salt may be
got from its reputation in old - school therapeutics. Its action
in acute rheumatism is hardly that of a mere alkali; and
Alexander and Frank, among its provers, have experienced
great pains in joints and muscles. The value of nitre-paper
in relieving asthma is undoubted, and is not traceable to any
known action of the drug ; Hahnemann mentions asthma as
a morbid state especially calling for it. It has been praised
in enuresis, to which, if that affection be paretic in nature, it is
surely homeopathic.
I hope that thus we may some day find a place for Nitre
among our remedies, and that its extensive provings may not
always remain barren. At present I can say nothing about
allied medicines or dose .

The permanganate of potash,

474 KALI PERMANGANICUM ,

Kali permangaricum ,
is the last of its salts which I have to mention . It has been
best known hitherto in the solution of it sold as “ Condy's
Fluid ,” where it disinfects and deodorizes by means of the
large proportion of oxygen it contains. It has now received
a most heroic proving from Dr. W. C. Allen , of Cleveland,
which you may read in the twenty - fifth volume of the Britisk
Journal of Homeopathy. Its power is shown herein to set
up acute inflammation of the throat, extending to the nares,
Jarynx, and salivary glands, and along the Eustachian tubes.
With these symptoms there were diuresis and obstinate con
stipation. Putting together this elective affinity for the throat
and its neighbourhood, and the chemical power of the drug
in dissolving the false membrane and destroying the offensive
emanations of diphtheria, Dr. Allen tried it in a desperate
case of the malignant form of this disease, with the most
rapid and brilliant results. The usual remedies had been
given without effect : the odour of the breath had become
almost unbearable ; a dark -coloured offensive diarrhea had
set in, while, “ with vomiting, fluids taken by the mouth were
returned by the nose, and a general prostration seemed to be
the precursor of a fatal termination. At this stage," says Dr.
Allen, “ I dissolved three grains of the permanganate in one
half - glass of water, and gave her a teaspoonful at 9 p.m.,
to be repeated every hour until I saw her. Called at 12 p.m.,
found her much improved, breathing easier, and a warm per
spiration had made its appearance. Continued the medicine. The
next morning I found her sitting up in her bed, and her whole
appearance changed. On examining the throat, to my astonish
ment I found the membrane hitherto so extensive almost
gone, a small patch on the left tonsil only being visible. The
offensive character of the breath was completely changed ; in
fact, I could discover no odour at all. Continued the medicine
 KALMIA LATIFOLIA . 475

every three hours while awake, and she went on to a speedy

convalescence.”
Dr. Allen adds : “ This is only one of a number I could
relate treated with the permanganate, all with equally good
results.” To my mind it recalls many a case in which I would
have given anything for such a medicine, but which went
down to the grave, untouched by the ordinary means. I have
only had one good opportunity since of trying it ; and though
the effect was nil, the case was hardly a fair one to be the test
of any remedy.* . I have also failed to meet with any com
munications of its use, successful or otherwise, at the hands of
others.
Drs. Drummond and Woodgates speak highly of a gargle
of the permanganate ( grs. iv to žviij) in ulcerated sore
throat . +

My next medicine, the mountain -laurel,

Kalmia latifolia ,
I include in my list mainly because it has been proved by Dr.
Constantine Hering. His pathogenesis,, obtained by several
persons from the dilutions from the 1st to the 30th, is contained
in the Materia Medica of American Provings. This, by the
way, is the collection I have hitherto spoken of as Esrey's ;
but erroneously. His is the only name on the title- page, but
I perceive it is as the author of the appended Repertory.
Each medicine was arranged by the principal prover (whose
name is given ), and the whole published by the American
Institute of Homeopathy.
Kalmia sometimes proves poisonous to animals eating it,
and even to human beings partaking of the honey of bees
which have ransacked its blossoms, or of pheasants who have
lived upon it. From instances of the latter kind it has been
ascertained to act like Digitalis, diminishing the force and
* See Brit Journ. of Hom ., xxviii, 736.
† Monthly Hom . Review , vols. xi and xii.
476 KREASOTUM .

frequency of the heart's action in a very marked manner, and

causing nausea and dimness of sight. Much pain is com
plained of in the region of the cervical vertebræ , which
suggests that like its analogue it acts through the medulla
oblongata . It has been little used in disease. Dr. Hering
thinks it shares the relation of Ledum and Rhododendron to
rheumatism , and that it will be found useful in rheumatic
affections of the heart. Dr. Bayes says he has found it curative
in face-pains of this character, worse at night, and seemingly
situated in the periosteum . Dr. Russell speaks of having
tried it in a case of nervous palpitation, but with purely
negative results.
The tincture is made from the leaves. Dr. Bayes gave the
third decimal attenuation .

Let us now consider the place occupied in specific

therapeutics by
Kreasotum ,
of which we make alcoholic attenuations for use.
A proving of Kreasote was carried out on seven persons
by the late Dr. Wahle of Rome, and published in the
sixteenth volume of the Archiv . Small doses only were emi.
ployed. Much interesting matter is contained in Dr. Cormack's
monograph on the drug ; and Teste's article should by all
means be consulted.
The results of Dr. Cormack's experiments on animals seem
to me negative as respects the medicinal value of Kreasote.
It appears to suspend the functions of the first organ through
whose capillaries it passes, causing vertigo and stupor if
introduced into the carotids, asphyxia if injected into the
veins. These effects are probably due to the coagulation of
the albumen of the blood, since Kreasote exerts an influence
of this kind under all circumstances . Upon this influence,
indeed, the remedial powers of the drug when applied locally
seem to depend. If your experience leads you to think
 KREASOTUM . 477

favourably of these uses, pray do not abandon them till you

get something better. The point is quite outside the domain
of homeopathy : she says neither yea nor nay to the practice.
When we come to the dynamic effects of Kreasote, however,
the aspect of things is changed . Pereira is never more
homeopathic in his unconscious honesty than in treating of
the properties of this drug. “Swallowed in large doses, ” he
writes, “ it causes vomiting and purging ;” and again, “ when
the dose has been considerably augmented, diarrhoea, or even
dysentery, has been produced .” And then he goes on to tell
us that was an internal remedy, Kreasote has been principally
celebrated, in this country, as a medicine possessing extraor
>

dinary powers of arresting vomiting ;" that in Sweden it was

found very useful in a wide -spread epidemic of dysentery ;
and that Mr. Spinks and Dr. Kesteven have published cases
of its successful employment in common diarrhoea . While to
crown all , we have this sentence : - “ occasionally it increases
the quantity of the urinary secretion ; but in diabetes it some
times has an opposite effect."
The power of Kreasote over vomiting is the only one of
these actions upon which I need dwell. It is recognised by
us with our small doses as heartily as by the old school with
their large. We agree, moreover, that it is 'in sympathetic
vomiting that Kreasote proves specific — where the irritation
starts from some other organ than the stomach . Thus the
vomiting of phthisis, of cancer of liver or uterus, of pregnancy,
and of chronic kidney disease is often checked by it. I must
say, however, that I had a chronic case of suspected cancer
of the stomach under treatment, the vomiting of which was
always arrested by Kreasote when it became troublesome. I
believe that some esteem Kreasote very highly in hysterical
vomiting.
This has been the main homeopathic as well as allopathic
use of Kreasote. My friend Dr. Hilbers, however, considers
that it has great power of sustaining the strength in
some of these exhausting diseases, as well as of checking the
478 KREASOTUM .

vomiting ; and relies much upon it in the treatment of

phthisis. Like the other antiseptics, moreover ( as Arsenie
and Carbo ), Kreasote has a dynamic influence over foul dis
charges and putrescent processes. I once made a very pretty
cure with it of persistent lochial discharge, which had become
brown and offensive . Dr. Guernsey recommends it in
leucorrhea of this foetid character, and Dr. Bayes when it
is corrosive.
But we owe to the fertile and original mind of M. Teste
a remarkable development of the uses of Kreasote. He
calls attention to the effects of the continued use of smoked
meat— “ a sort of scurvy carrying off the teeth , foul breath,
costiveness, a general malaise, and a real cacohymia." He
then suggests that the power of Kreasote when locally applied,
not merely to relieve temporarily the pain of toothache, but to
arrest the progress of caries, is of a dynamic nature . Putting
these facts together, he justifies by them the following state
ments drawn from his experience :
1. Kreasote is in children of all ages, as well as in adults,
the chief remedy for odontalgia, when it is caused by caries of
the teeth .
2. When dentition is so badly performed as to become a
disease, comprising general irritation and cachexia with de
generation of the teeth themselves, especially when the child
is constipated, Kreasote is the specific remedy.
These statements I can confirm from repeated trials in my
own practice, which have yielded me almost uniform success.
Dr. Madden also writes :-“ I like Kreasote in dentition very
much. My first case was our own baby. She had been
extremely fretful and irritable and sleepless for three or four
days, and Chamomilla had done no good . I gave Kreasote
24, and in a quarter of an hour she was asleep, and slept eleven
hours right off, and woke cheerful. The nurse was almost
frightened, thinking I must have given an opiate." I cannot
follow M. Teste, however, when he goes on to extol Kreasote as
“the specific for syphilis in nursing children." If he limits
 LACTUCA VIROSA . 479

it, as he seems to do subsequently , to cases where the disease

manifests itself under the exanthematous form ," I shall not
disagree. But I have failed to see any effect from Kreasote
upon the profound cacohymia which this sad disease so often
manifests.
M. Teste further adds that Kreasote is most suitable to
delicate cachectic children : and when given to those of a
lively, vigorous, and sanguine constitution, makes them feel so
uncomfortable that the exhibition of Ferrum metallicum as.
an antidote becomes necessary .
You will see from what I have now said that I cannot
accept the present identification of Kreasote with Carbolic
acid as a remedy. The two have similar chemical properties,
and coincide at some points of their spheres of action ; but
these are quite distinct. Closer analogues of Kreasote are
Carbo animalis and vegetabilis ; Mercurius ; and Petroleum .
I have always used the second dilution for vomiting and
uterine discharges ; but have followed M. Teste in giving the
12th in toothache, and the 24th in morbid dentition and
infantile syphilis.
I conclude this lecture with a short account of the virtues
of the wild lettuce ,

Lactuca virosa .
The milky juice of this plant and of the milder Lactuca
sativa has long been in use as Lactucarium . In homeopathic
practice a tincture prepared from the entire plant is employed .
The general knowledge about the action of Lactucarium is
well epitomized by Pereira . There is a proving of Lactuca virosa
in the fifth volume of the Hygea ; and a summary of the
experiments, with remarks, is given by Dr. Seidel in the
Journal für Arzneimittellehre, and translated in the first volume
of the Révue de la Matière Médicale specifique. All the provers
( fifteen in number) took considerable doses of the tincture or
extract.
480 LACTUCA VIROSA .

As very little is known about this drug (it is not mentioned

by Hempel or Teste ) I will read you in full the summary of
its effects furnished by Dr. Seidel.
“The general character of the action of Lactuca virosa can
be traced from the preceding experiments as follows :
“ Immediately after taking it, there was a sensation of heat
in the stomach, accompanied by an uneasiness which mounted
into the throat, and an insipid taste . After a quarter of an
hour, this sensation gave place to an icy coldness in the
stomach and throat. At the same time, the prover experienced
a contraction at the pit of the stomach , which was followed by
real præcordial anguish ; the thorax seemed compressed and
narrowed , especially while sitting with the body bent. He
felt aa desire to breathe deeply, an ardent longing for the open
air ; and had frequent yawnings. It was not till after this
that the head became confused and giddy , without, however,
the judgment being obscured . He had aa sensation (a physical
one) of wavering in the brain , which rendered every posture
of the body uncertain , and was accompanied with buzzings in
the depth of the ears. After from fifteen to thirty minutes
there supervened, in the midst of eructations which gave but
slight relief, gurglings in the abdomen with emission of flatu
lence, which last did good. The præcordial anguish diminished,
and alternated with heats, flying shootings, and sensations of
cold in the chest. Deglutition became difficult, not because
of any obstacle in the throat, but because the muscles of the
pharynx refused their office. There were also constant sighings.
Keeping himself seated with the body bent relieved the
stomach ; and sitting upright did good to the chest. The
thorax could not bear any pressure ; there was cloudiness of
the head, but the veil which covered the sight disappeared
when he fixedly regarded an object. At the end of an hour
mucosity had accumulated in the throat, which with some was
at the same time rough ; and aa cough was set up whose short
paroxysms grievously pained the chest and the head . This
cough became more violent afterwards, and the headache
 LACTUCA VIROSA . 481

grew worse . This last was characterised at one time by con

fusion merely, at another by painful pressings. In some
subjects, there was at this time a ' clavus hystericus.'
6 With
these there were fulness in the abdomen, obscuration of sight,
and difficulty of breathing. The above symptoms increased
up to the third or fourth hour, and then diminished little by
little. Those of the chest, especially the oppression and desire
to breathe deeply, continued several days. Those of the
abdomen went off most frequently with emissions of flatulence
or with a scanty stool, pappy or loose, which took place the
first day, and was followed by a long constipation. During
the first few hours, the secretion of urine was restrained, but
later it increased considerably . There was shuddering, with
great prostration and lassitude, for the first days ; and in the
nights deep sleep, quiet, sometimes lethargic ; but afterwards
the sleep was agitated and interrupted . The pulse was
somewhat less frequent during the first days. The disposition
manifested itself in sadness, anxiety, and causeless chagrin .”
Besides these symptoms, I note the hepatic sufferings of
many of the provers: with one, “ the liver was swollen, hard,
the pressure of the band under the false ribs could not be
borne, with a rather pressive pain ."
The facts here given warrant Dr. Seidel in further saying
that “ the pure milky juice of the lettuce, as it is contained in
' lactucarium ,' seems to act principally on the brain and
nervous system , and to exert less sensible effects in the vege
tative sphere than preparations in which the juice of the
whole plant is employed .” The observations summarized by
Pereira embrace the neurotic properties only of the drug. It
is regarded as a “ sedative," diminishing the force and fre
quency of the pulse, and disposing to sleep. Hence its name
of " lettuce -opium .” It differs, however, from opium in
causing no excitement either of brain or circulation .
In ordinary practice, Lactucarium has been employed as an
“ anodyne, hypnotic, antispasmodic, and sedative ;" but its
operation is considered uncertain . In the school of Hahne
482 LACTUCA VIROSA .

mann it has hitherto found little if any employment, though

it seems indicated in some forms of hepatic and pulmonary con
gestion, of clavus, and of cerebral weakness with somnolence.
At any rate, should a repertory ever direct us to it, we may
prescribe it with confidence that the symptoms are genuine
effects of the drug.
Lactucarium is given in doses of from three to twenty
grains. The dilution best suited to obtain the homeopathic
action has not yet been ascertained .
 LECTURE XXVII.

LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT- POISONS .

I SHALL devote to -day's lecture to the medicine we call

Lachesis, taking occasion thereby to discourse upon the
medicinal use of serpent-venom generally, and upon the other
members of the family which, as Crotalus and Naja respec
tively, have place in the Materia Medica of Homæopathy.
We prepare such substances by triturating the virus, or
dissolving it in glycerine. Alcohol is not considered a suitable
menstruum for the lower attenuations ; but it seems to make
no difference when we get into the region of infinitesimals.
Of our sources of information as to the physiological effects
of snake - venom we must place first in order the Wirkungen
des Schlangengiftes of Dr. Constantine Hering. A copy of
this rare book I am able to lay before you. Published in
1837, it contains aa full collection of the phenomena of snake
bites, as observed and recorded by authors before that time.
These are arranged in the Hahnemannian schema, and incor
porated with them are also numerous symptoms obtained
by the author and fifteen fellow -observers on both healthy and
sick persons. Most of these, according to the unfortunate
practice of that time, were got from the thirtieth dilution,
which was then exclusively in use both for proving and in
practice. But some symptoms appeared in Dr. Hering
himself while triturating the venom, and some were the result
of swallowing it by way of experiment mixed with cheese.
This collection contains symptoms obtained from the
lance -headed viper, Lachesis trigonocephalus ; the rattle -snake,
Orotalus horridus ; the cobra, Naja tripudians ; and from the
 484 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS .

Italian and German species of viper - Vipera Redi and torra.

The provings were mostly made with the first of these. The
pathogenesis of Crotalus has since been filled in by Dr. Mure,
of Brazil, who goes to work after Hering's fashion ; and that
of Naja, in a way to us far more satisfactory, by the late Dr.
Rutherfurd Russell. The latter excellent proving appeared
in the eleventh and twelfth volumes of the British Journal of
Homeopathy. Besides his own, it includes the symptoms
obtained by eight male and three female experimenters. The
first, third, and sixth attenuations were used.
Dr. Russell prefixes several fresh narratives of poisoning by
Cobra -bites. But this branch of the subject has received
special attention of late. Dr. Fayrer's great work on The
Thanatophidia of India is known to all ; but, as it is too
much of an edition de luxe to be generally accessible, II will
make my references to the narratives of poisoning extracted
from it which Dr. Pyburn has collected in the sixteenth
volume of the Monthly Homeopathic Review . I would also
commend to your notice the essay of Dr. Weir Mitchell, “ On
the Venom of the Rattlesnake," contained in the twelfth volume
of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge (Washington,
1860) ; and also an account of a series of inoculations of the
same virus, practised with the hope that they would prove
prophylactic of yellow fever, given by Dr. Neidhard in his
treatise On Crotalus horridus in Yellow Fever (second edition,
New York, 1868) .
I must repeat here what I said under the head of Apis, that
it is no longer necessary to apologize for our use of serpent
venom as a medicine introduced through the ordinary channel.
It is now fully admitted , by those most qualified to judge, that
such virus does act however admitted into the circulation,
though most certain and rapid in its influence when it enters
the blood direct .
I think that the results of serpent- bites, or the inoculation
of their venom, will be found to fall into three groups, corte
sponding to three leading forms of disease.
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT -POISONS . 485

I. In the first group the symptoms are those of direct

poisoning of the nervous centres without local inflammation
or blood changes. Sometimes the symptoms are those of
epilepsy, as in the second case in Dr. Pyburn's paper ; some
times they are tetaniform , as in the fourth ; most frequently
there is nothing but profound prostration with speedily super
vening unconsciousness. From the sense of being beated all
over experienced in the third and fourth cases we may infer
that there is paresis of the vaso -motor system . A bitten person
who recovered speaks of a “ violent throbbing headache” soon
coming on (Case 6) . Inoculation of the rattlesnake virus
produced at the moment vertigo, which soon passed away ;
more rarely a nervous trembling of longer duration. Other
neurotic effects of the inoculation were headache, generally
occupying the frontal and orbital region, and lasting on an
average twenty -one hours : and neuralgic pains in the head
and neck .
The outline thus given us in the effects of serpent-bites is
filled in by the experiments which have been made with the
diluted virus taken internally. These must be studied in the
records I have mentioned. The influence manifested itself
mainly in the throat and larynx, where there was irritation and
spasm, and in the head . The headache produced by Naja
was often very severe, and accompanied with profound de
pression .
II. The second form of serpent poisoning which seems to
obtain is the purpuric or hæmorrhagic. Dr. Pyburn refers to
some instances of this,*等 but aa fuller account of it is given by
Dr. Neidhard and by Dr. Mitchell.
Dr. Neidhard shows the inoculations to have produced, in
from eighteen to twenty -four hours, the hæmorrhagic con
dition of the gums which authors regard as a characteristic
symptom of yellow fever, and pathologically identical with
its black vomit. With this there were febrile heat, thirst and
Pp . 676, 677.
32
486 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS .

anorexia, red countenance, and injected conjunctiva ; then

jaundice and swelling of the face, with angina tonsillaris.
Dr. Mitchell found, when death was not caused by the
ordinary nervous shock , a decomposition of the blood set up,
resulting in its complete diffluence and non - coagulability.
Ecchymoses and hæmorrhages were constant in the animals
poisoned by him . He thinks the fibrin affected rather than
the corpuscles, but Dr. Fayrer found the latter altered in
form and non -adherent.
In a later contribution to the Medical Times and Gazette,*
Dr. Mitchell speaks again of the striking power of snake
venom to cause hæmorrhages. You have only, he says, to
moisten the intestinal peritoneum with it, and blood will be
forthwith effused at the spot.
He concludes his account of the action of the rattlesnake
venom by “ calling attention to the singular likeness between
the symptoms and lesions of Crotalus poisoning and those of
certain maladies, such as yellow fever.” He points out that
in either there is “ a class of cases in which death seems to
occur suddenly and inexplicably, as though caused by az
overwhelming dose of the poison.” This holds good also
of scarlatina . “ A second class of cases survive the first
shock of the malady, and then begin to exhibit the train of
symptoms which terminate in more or less complete degrada
tion of the blood. All these maladies, vaying among them
selves, exhibiting, as it were, preferences for this or that
organ , agree in the destruction of the fibrin of the blood
which their fatal cases frequently exhibit. In yellow fever
the likeness to the venom poisoning is most distinctly pre
served , as we trace the symptoms of both diseases to the
point where the diffluent blood leaks out into the mucous and
serous cavities .” The effects of inoculation , as I have cited
them , quite sustain Dr. Mitchell's comparison ; and the
angina tonsillaris noted there again adds scarlatina to the
similar diseases.
* Feb. 6, 1869.
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS . 487

The jaundice of snakebites is one element in the resem

blance of their phenomena to those of yellow fever. Fre
richs * mentions several cases of its occurrence . It is not
caused by obstruction to the flow of bile ; and it depends
either upon disordered innervation , or upon changes in the
blood hindering the due metamorphosis of the reabsorbed secre
tion. Of jaundice from the former cause we have an instance
in that form of it which has followed (often suddenly) from
mental emotions. The rapidity with which yellowness some
times supervenes upon bites, especially of the viper (“ in less
than an hour" Mead says he has seen itt) , suggests this ex
planation of it. But there is a jaundice which appears later
on in the course of snake poisoning, which rather denotes
that which is characteristic of yellow fever, and which not
unfrequently complicates pyemia, typhus, and other acute
blood infections. In these maladies there is no change in
the secreting structure of the liver, and hardly enough in
its circulation to account for the deep and lasting jaundice
observed. Moreover, “ it is worthy of notice," writes Frerichs,
" that when the diseases just alluded to are complicated with
jaundice, a group of severe symptoms, such as hemorrhages from
the gastro -intestinal mucous membrane, ecchymoses of the surface,
albuminuria, hæmaturia, suppression of urine, &c. , manifest
themselves.” Such symptoms plainly point to an extensive
disorganization of the blood, and have already come before
us as effects of serpent poisoning. I have in another place
gone into the theory of their causation, I and will only here
suggest that they depend upon some destructive agent which
may either be furnished by the liver itself, as in acute
atrophy of that organ, or formed independently of it as in
these fevers. In the former case they find their simile in
Phosphorus ; in the latter in snake venom.
III. In the third place we have those symptoms which
* Diseases of the Liver (New Syd . Soc.), vol. i, 160.
† Ibid .
Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxii , 127.
453 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS .

result from the local affection induced by the bite. The in .

flammation set up is always of an asthenic character. In
form it is a cellulitis or an erysipelas. Its sanies is absorbed
either by the lymphatics, causing angioleucitis, abscess of the
lymphatic glands, and inflammation of the areolar tissue
higher up ; or by the veins, resulting in præmia . The local
inflammation often goes on to gangrene ; and with this, and
the other secondary consequences described, there is consti
tutional disorder of a typhoid type.
These phenomena at once open a wide range of action for
serpent venom, when administered as a remedy according to
the principle similia similibus. Whenever aa local affection
assumes a malignant character, and from thence proceed
poisoning of the blood and prostration of the pervous ener
Traumatic gangrene, carbuncle,
gies, its use is indicated .
malignant pustule, malignant erysipelas, putrid sore throat
are instances of such a pathological state. The effects of
dissection wounds, and pyæmia in general, come within
the same category ; and the second stage of malignant scar .
latina often belongs to it, where, as Watson puts it, “the
system is reinoculated from " the ulcerated and gangrenous
throat.
We have now to inquire how far these indications have
been carried out in practice. The materials for such an in
quiry are scattered throughout our literature ; but there are
three records of especial fulness to which I shall make re
ference . The first is an article on Lachesis by its introducer,
Dr. C. Hering, in the second volume of the British Journa!
of Homoeopathy. The second is a series of cases of severe
disease, illustrating the action of the same remedy, by Dr.
Carroll Dunham , in the fourth volume of the American
Homeopathic Review.. The third is a paper on the snake
poisons, by Dr. Bradshaw , of Nottingham , which you will
find in the first volume of the Annals of the British Hom00
pathic Society.
1. In the neurotic sphere of these poisons they have
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT- POISONS. 489

proved most valuable remedies. They heal, as they hurt,

especially when the nerves having their centres in the
medulla oblongata are disordered. Hence their usefulness in
affections of the throat and larynx, the bronchi, and the heart.
Lachesis is a great medicine for what may be called a
" nervous sore throat.” In its acute form the sense of
aching is out of all proportion to the visible mischief .
When chronic, it is the “ irritable throat," always uneasy ,
and causing choking, hawking, and coughing. The feeling
as of a dry spot in the throat, or of general dryness of
the part, especially on waking from sleep, also of a lump in
the throat on empty deglutition, are characteristic of it.
Several of Dr. Hering's cases are of this kind ; and there is a
striking one in the twenty-second volume of the British
Journal of Homeopathy (p. 488) . It is thought by some
that Lachesis even controls inflammations of the throat, as
tonsillitis (especially, they say , when beginning in the left
tonsil), * and syphilitic angina.t Naja certainly effected, in
Dr. Russell's hands, a rapid cure of an acute pharyngo
laryngitis.I He considered it indicated when the fauces had a
dark - red colour.
The affection of the larynx in which Lachesis has been
found curative is a catarrh with little secretion and much
sensitiveness. The cough is dry, coming as it were from a
sense of tickling in the larynx, provoked by deep inspiration,
by speaking, and especially by external pressure, which cannot
be borne, and aggravates the whole trouble . “ There is
moreover a sense of fulness in the trachea and a very painfn!
aching in the os hyoides.” I quote from Dr. Carroll Dunham ,
whose comparison of Lachesis with Belladonna, Phosphorus,
Causticum , and Rumex crispus is a masterly piece of work .
* Amer. Journ . of Hom ., Mat. Med ., i, 126.
+ Hering, Case 4. Amer. Hom . Rev., iv, 410. Brit. Journ. of Hom .,
ui, 127.
1 Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xii, 213.
$ See Hale's New Remedies, sub voce Rumex crispus.
 490 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS .

Naja has proved in my hands very useful in cough, laryngis

mus, and even spasmodic stricture of the æsophagus, when
these are the result of spinal irritation affecting the nucha.
Lachesis has no power over bronchitis, as such. But it has
rendered great service in this affection as a neurotic ally. It
is indicated when the cough is spasmodic and suffocative ; and,
though abundance of fluid mucus is heard in the chest, it is
*
not expectorated ,* or only after long effort.f Such coughs
occur especially in the subjects of cyanosis and cardiac disease ;
and in their bronchial attacks Lachesis should always be
thought of.
Both Lachesis and Naja are of great value in cardiac
affections ; not, I think, by direct action on the substance
of the organ, but by influencing its innervation. In the
“ tremulous irritability of the heart ” left behind after
scarlatinat and such -like fevers, and in the sympathetic
cough of cardiac affections, Lachesis is highly praised. Naja
was Dr. Russell's favourite remedy for chronic nervous pal
pitation , for the restoration of a heart damaged by acute
inflammation , and for assuaging the sufferings of chronic
hypertrophy and valvular disease . Dr. Bradshaw reports a
case of angina pectoris cured with it ( Case 1) .
Besides these pneumogastric disorders, we have headache as a
trouble in which both Lachesis and Naja have done good
service. The headaches of Lachesis are fully discussed and
illustrated in Dr. Black's papers in the fifth volume of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy (pp. 403, 424-435). The
6
" nervous ” and the “ sick ” headache are its spheres ; the pain
is unilateral and the face pale. It is also good for the burning
vertex headaches of the menopausia. The headache of Naja
is a dull but severe pain in the temporo -frontal region, with
. Amer. Hom . Review , iv , 415.
+ Bayes, Applied Homæopathy, p. 109.
I Annals, iv, 167.
§ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xii, 372, 549 ; Annals, i, 297 .
See also Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxii. 482.
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT-POISONS . 49i

much depression of spirits.* Dr. Russell also speaks of it in

weight and pressure at the vertex, with cold feet and flushes
of the face .
I have no knowledge of the application to practice of the
epileptic and tetanic phenomena occasionally induced by snake
venom, though it would seem specially homeopathic to trau
matic tetanus, and no less to hydrophobia . But one of the
most valuable uses of Lachesis hangs on the paresis of the
sympathetic which we have seen induced in sufferers from the
bite. It is in that vaso-motor ataxy, or ganglionic nervous
ness, which is exhibited chiefly in the " flushings ”" of the
climacteric period, but which has other manifestations . It
constitutes or complicates most affections occurring at this
time of life, and Lachesis is helpful in all of them . This is
the general testimony of those who have used it. I The eighth
case of Dr. Hering's series is one of nervous dyspepsia , which
reads like a neurosis of the solar plexus .
In these nervous affections “ characteristic ” symptoms of
the drug, however trivial, are often useful guides, while in
graver maladies they would be out of place. One of these
is that symptoms especially appear, or are aggravated, on
waking from sleep.
II. Next, what use has been made of the hæmatic action of
serpent venom ?
Of purpura I can only find two cases in which it was
given . In both it rapidly dissipated the symptoms. The
hæmorrhage was subcutaneous only. The constant oozing of
blood from an ulcer remaining after post-scarlatinal abscess
led to its use in one instance,|| and with the best results. Our
* Brit. Journ ., xii, 214.
† The symptoms induced in dogs by the bite of the cobra often
shadowed out, and in one case strikingly imitated, even to the rage, the
phenomena of hydrophobia ( Brit. Journ, of Hom ., xi, 82—84 ).
Monthly Hom . Review , ix, 763 ; Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxi, 127–131 .
§ Amer . Jour. of Hom . Mat. Med ., iv, 66 ; Brit. Journ of Hom ., xxii,
489, || Amer . Hom . Rev., iv , 362.
492 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT- POISONS .

information regarding its employment in yellow fever comes

from Drs. Holcombe * and Neidhardt. The former used
Lachesis and speaks well of it ; but as Arsenicum was generally
alternated with it, this experience is of doubtful value. Dr.
Neidhard, in an epidemic occurring in Philadelphia in 1853,
was led to rely more and more exclusively on Crotalus in its
treatment. He found the dilutions from the third downwards
far superior to the higher. In 1858 some more cases occurred,
and again Crotalus served him well. He was thus led to give
it in cognate forms of disease (as he considers them) —the
“ bilious remittents ” of his neighbourhood , which often
assume a malignant form , and then closely resemble the true
"typhus icterodes." Here, also, he found the remedy of signal
value.
Serpent venom should be borne in mind as a remedy:
First. Whenever jaundice, primary or secondary , is accom
panied with ecchymoses or hæmorrhages. Here it compares
with Phosphorus, which would supplant it when the liver
was intimately affected, as in acute atrophy of that organ.
Jaundice from mental emotion would also suggest snake
venom, especially that of the viper, as its remedy.
Second. Whenever a purpuric condition supervenes upon
other diseases, as typhus and variola , constituting their hæmor
>

rhagic forms. These are very fatal, and a powerful remedy

for them is much needed. Arsenic is tolerably homeopathic,
but is hardly rapid enough in its action.
Third. When the epidemic cerebro -spinal meningitis appears
in the form known as “ malignant purpuric ” or “ spotted
fever. " Here the prostration is early and intense ; the
febrile reaction slight ; and the appearance of petechiæ
constant, with sometimes hæmorrhages.
III. Malignant local inflammations, with secondary blood
infection and nervous prostration, have proved pre -eminently
* North Amer . Jour. of Hom ., iii.
+ Op. cit .
I Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 394-5
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS . 493

the sphere of action of Lachesis. A typical instance is trau

matic gangrene. Of this disease Dr. Dake, of Pittsburg, has :
published three cases, which are so decisive as to overcome
even Dr. Hempel's scepticism as to the virtue of the remedy.
They are given at length in the second edition of his Materia
Medica ; and in the fourth volume of the American Homco
pathic Review Dr. Searle, of Brooklyn, has recorded
two others. To these I would add the testimony of Dr.
Franklin, who, as army - surgeon in the late civil war in
America, had abundant opportunity of seeing the disease.
“ I have used this remedy,” he writes in his Science and Art
of Surgery, “in a number of cases of gangrene following
wounds, and have never been disappointed in its results. In
a case of compound comminuted leg -fracture, terminating in
gangrene and threatening speedy destruction of the limb, the
gangrene was quickly checked by the internal and external
use of Lachesis, the inflammation subsiding, and the healing
process moving on to a complete cure . In another case of
compound dislocation of the ankle-joint, with fracture of mal
leolus externus, followed by gangrene, Lachesis effected a
speedy cure, the patient making a good recovery under the
surgical treatment employed. I cannot recommend too highly
the use of this agent for gangrene, and am confident the
observations of all who have employed or may employ it will
bear me out in the assertion that it is eminently curative of
gangrenous affections. ”
It is affections of this kind, moreover, which form the bulk
of the paper of Dr. Carroll Dunham to which I have referred.
He begins with a case of septicæmia occurring in his own
person, as the result of a wound incurred during the post
mortem examination of a case of puerperal peritonitis. Both
the local and general symptoms were severe, but they rapidly
yielded to Lachesis 12 , three times a day. Next he relates an
epidemic of malignant pustule, in which he treated eight cases
with Lachesis alone. “ It relieved the pain within aa few hours.
after the first dose was given , and the patients all recovered
194 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT- POISONS .

very speedily.” Then he speaks of three cases of phlebitis

supervening upon ulcers (probably syphilitie) of the lower
extremities. There was great and sudden prostration of
strength, low muttering delirium, and general typhoid symp
toms. The effect of Lachesis was all that could be desired,
the patients rallying promptly, and all symptoms of phlebitis
speedily disappearing. Last, he narrates one case, and refers
to others, of carbuncle, in which the constitutional symptoms
denoted very great prostration, not preceded or attended by
the nervous and vascular erethism which is sometimes ob
served in similar cases. The absence of this condition is, he
thinks, in all these disorders the indication for Lachesis as
against Arsenicum, when the asthenia is not so complete as
to call for Carbo vegetabilis.
Besides these, Dr. Dunham refers to the usefulness of
Lachesis in certain cases of diphtheria . In these the tume
faction of the throat was slight, and the redness of the mucous
membrane hardly noticeable, the diphtheritic deposits consist
ing merely of two or three patches hardly larger than a pin's
head . But the prostration of strength was quite alarming ;'
the pulse became, in a very short time, slow, feeble, and com
pressed ; a cold, clammy sweat frequently covered the fore
head and extremities; the breath was fætid ; the appetite
entirely destroyed. “ In such cases," he writes, “ in all in
which the constitutional symptoms thus predominated over
the local, Lachesis produced prompt and lasting improvement,
so much so that very rarely was any other remedy given sub
sequently ." To the same effect is the testimony of Dr. Tietze,
of Philadelphia, in the fourth volume of the United States
Medical and Surgical Journal. He mentions a purple, livid
* " In acute cases ” (of snake-poisoning) “ the symptoms of depression
are most marked, and the heart and nerve centres are suddenly and fear
fully enfeebled, so that their irritability is lessened, and is finally lost
earlier than occurs in other forms of death ” (Mitchell, loc. cit.). * The
principal constitutional effect of the venoin is a general prostration of the
most appalling character " (ibid.) .
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT-POISONS . 495

colour of the affected parts, with dull, dry appearance and

little swelling, also pain out of all proportion to the amount
of inflammation, as local characteristics of the remedy. He
places it as third to Belladonna and Apis in throat affections,
in the descent from sthenic to asthenic conditions . Dr. E. M.
Hale also contributes to the American Journal of Homoeopathic
Materia Medica * three similar cases of diphtheria in children,
which made a rapid recovery under Lachesis, while the rest
of the family (altogether eight in number) under allopathic
treatment succumbed to the disease.
Cognate to diphtheria is scarlatina. We have already seen
how Dr. Mitchell suggests the similarity between the pheno
mena of snake-poisoning in its most foudroyant form , and
those of the invasion of malignant scarlet, as well as yellow,
fever. Dr. P. P. Wells, of Brooklyn, sustains the comparison
from the homeopathic point of view.t But there is another
stage of scarlatina in which the power of Lachesis comes into
play. It is when the throat symptoms assume a virulent
character, and therewith signs of blood -poisoning and pros
tration show themselves. I am reminded as I speak of a
case of this kind where Lachesis rapidly removed the patient
from the sphere of gravest foreboding into that of happy con
valescence .
I have already suggested malignant erysipelas, and pyæmic
infection in general, as morbid states of this kind, and thus
indicative of snake venom in their treatment. Severe symp
toms resulting from insect stings would also call for it in prefer
ence to Apis or Ledum :: there is on record a case of the bite of
the tarantula in which it proved very efficacious. The
following narrative, moreover, suggests the homeopathicity of
Crotalus to glanders. “ On the Rio Grande, in October, 1857, two
horses were bitten by the same rattlesnake while grazing. A

* Vol. i, p. 184 .
+ Amer. Hom . Review , iv, 355 ; see also p. 556.
1 Amer. Jour. of Hom . Mat. Med ., iv, 106.
496 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT - POISONS .

few hours afterwards the sub -maxillary , parotid , and all glands
situated about the head and neck were greatly enlarged ; from
the nostrils and gums a clear mucous discharge ran down ;
the eyes were glairy, with the pupils greatly dilated ; and the
coat was rough and staring." After antidotes, “ both horses
recovered ; one, although reduced in flesh and thrown out of
condition, was fit for work in a week, but the other only just
escaped with his life, became a perfect skeleton, and only
commenced to mend at the end of three weeks."" #
There are other uses of snake-venom , to which I cannot do
more than refer . Both Lachesis and Naja have a decided
ovarian action , and have proved useful in chronic affections of
this organ.t Lachesis has cured inflammation of the
cæcum ; I and I have often seen it arrest threatened
ulceration about the ancle in cases of varicosis of the
leg. Naja was of use in Dr. Bradshaw's hands in spinal
irritation, and in the cough of pulmonary and laryngeal
phthisis. Dr. Hilbers also esteems Crotalus highly for the
latter affection. But the three spheres of action in which we
have seen the poison of serpents at work are its main field of
operation . It is here an exquisite instance of the operation
of the law of similars. The circles of its poisonous and
curative action exactly coincide. Not only is it quantum
venenum , tantum remedium , but also quale venenum , tale
remedium .
The analogues of serpent venom are Apis of course, and
Arsenicum .
The observations of the curative action of Lachesis at least,
if worth anything at all, prove the validity, not only of our
therapeutic rule, but also of the infinitesimal dose. The
results gained with it are all due to the sixth or higher
attenuations, for we have never had lower ones in our hands.
* Monthly Hom . Review , xiv, 442.
† Amer . Journ. of Hom . Mat. Med ., i, 44 ; United States Med , and
Surg. Journ., ii, 85.
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., v, 40 .
 LACHESIS AND THE SERPENT- POISONS . 497

Dr. Hayward, whose energy has recently provided us with a

fresh supply of rattlesnake poison, is endeavouring also to
replenish our stock of that of the cobra and the lance-headed
viper. It will then be interesting to ascertain if Lachesis will
do more in the lower than it has done in the higher potencies.
Crotalus and Naja have usually been given in the first three
attenuations.
 LECTURE XXVIII.

LEDUM , LEPTANDRA , LILIUM , LITHIUM , LOBELIA, LYCOPODIUM ,

LYCOPUS, MAGNESIA CARBONICA AND MURIATICA, MAN
GANUM , MENYANTHES.

I have to -day to bring before you a long list of minor

medicines, with one only-Lycopodium-of primary im
portance.
We will begin with the marsh tea, or wild rosemary
Ledum palustre.
The tincture is prepared from the small twigs and leaves.
The proving of Ledum is in the fourth volume of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 186 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 148 from six others, and four from authors.
In his “ Essay on a New Principle for ascertaining the
Curative Power of Drugs," published in Hufeland's Journal in
1796 , Hahnemann speaks of having ascertained that Ledum
caused difficult and painful respiration, a painful shooting
sensation in all parts of the throat, and troublesome itching
of the skin. Hence, he thought, upon the principle similia
similibus then just dawning upon him, were explained its virtues
in whooping -cough and asthma, in inflammatory and even
malignant sore-throat, and in chronic cutaneous diseases. In
his Fragmenta de viribus (1805) he published his first patho
genesis of the plant, whose 75 symptoms have now swelled
to the fuller list in the Materia Medica Pura. Besides the
symptoms already mentioned, its most noteworthy effects seem
to be aa determination of blood to the head and chest, causing
a sort of intoxication in the one, and cough with bright san
 LEDUM PALUSTRE . 499

guineous expectoration in the other ; and pain and swelling

in the joints.
In his preface to the pathogenesis, Hahnemann says that
Ledum will prove suitable only in chronic maladies charac
terised by coldness and deficiency of animal heat. Its chief
use in the homeopathic school has been in non -inflammatory
articular affections; of which you may read two excellent
illustrations in the ninth volume of the British Journal of
Homeopathy. Dr. Drury has several times expressed his high
appreciation of it in hæmoptysis, and Dr. Drysdale has
recorded a case in which it immediately removed a nocturnal
itching of the feet. * But I think that for our best knowledge
of how to use Ledum we are indebted to M. Teste. He thinks
that it acts specially on parts of the body where the cellular
tissue is wanting, as the fingers and toes ; and hence affects
the small joints rather than the large. He recommends it
accordingly for traumatic whitlow ; and for true gout of a
sub -acute nature, seated in the hands or feet, and causing
little swelling, He goes on to affirm that Ledum is to punc
tured wounds what Arnica is to contusions. Besides some
obvious applications of this property of the drug, he mentions
that it gives almost immediate relief to the itching caused
by mosquito -bites ; and this even when given internally
in the fifteenth dilution. In the stings of bees and wasps,
he says, the result is less prompt, but still very satis
factory.
There is a general agreement as to the efficacy of this last
application of Ledum, though the tincture is commonly used
in aa less diluted form, and applied locally also.† As a remedy
for punctured wounds it supplies the gap left by Arnica,
Calendula, and Hypericum , which correspond to contused, in
cised, and lacerated wounds respectively. M. Teste notes the
intense coldness which sometimes accompanies these injuries as
corroborating the choice of Ledum for them ; and one of our
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 166.
+ See Monthly Hom . Rev. xiii, 203 ; Brit. Journ . of Hom ., April, 1876.
500 LEPTANDRA VIRGINICA .

Belgian confrères has just communicated a case in which daily

epileptiform attacks supervened in a child after a wound in
the head from scissors, which almost immediately yielded to the
remedy.*
On the skin, M. Teste says, Ledum causes “an eczematous
eruption, with a tingling itching, that spreads over the whole
body, penetrates into the mouth , probably also into the air
passages, and occasions a spasmodic cough, which is sometimes
very violent.” A similar condition is sometimes met with
idiopathically in gouty subjects.
M. Teste compares Ledum with Rhus, Arnica , and Croton ;
to which may be added Pulsatilla and Ruta .
His recommendations are best carried out with his dilutions,
viz , about the sixth or twelfth.
My next is an American medicine, the “ black root,"
Leptandra Virginica.
The tincture of the root, and triturations of Leptandrin, are
the officinal preparations.
A proving of this medicine by Dr. Burt is given by Dr. Hale
in the second edition of his New Remedies.
The action of Leptandra is upon the liver and bowels. Dr.
Burt suffered from dull aching distress in the region of the
liver and gall -bladder, extending to the spine. With this
there were such sympathetic symptoms as frontal headache,
soreness of the eyeballs, and pain in the left shoulder. A
student who took the drug for two weeks reports that it
gave him actual jaundice. The intestinal evacuations are
much affected by Leptandra. Its most frequent and cha
racteristic effect is seen in stools frequent, profuse, black,
foetid , and papescent : they are difficult to retain . Under the
prolonged use of the drug the stools become watery, and later
have quantities of mucus in them .
Leptandra has not been much used as a remedy ; but such
* Revue Hom. Belge, Oct. 1875.
 LILIUM TIGRINUM . 501

applications as it has received have been in precise accordance

with the pathogenetic effects I have now described. In certain
cases of " bilious headache " and " liver - complaint," especially
when the characteristic blackish stools are present, it has been
found very useful. And it has occasionally proved curative
in dysentery .
It most resembles Bryonia , Iris, and Podophyllum .
The lower potencies only have been used.
I have now to bring before you another American contri
bution to the Materia Medica, which , though only of recent
introduction , bids fair to take an important place, especially in
uterine therapeutics. I refer to the tiger lily,
Lilium tigrinum .
The tincture is prepared from the flowers.
We owe this remedy to Dr. W. G. Payne, of Bath, Maine,
U.S. Provings of it carried out at his instigation - by four
teen persons in all, of whom nine were women-have been
appearing from time to time in America ; and they are
gathered up by him into one view in the Transactions of the
New York State Homeopathic Medical Society for 1871-2.
This résumé, with an account of what has been done with the
medicine clinically, may be read in the fourth edition of Dr.
Hale's New Remedies.
Dr. Payne was led to prove Lilium from the reported death
of a child in convulsions from eating the pollen . Nothing
further of this kind was manifested ; but in the female
provers a series of symptoms occurred in the sexual organs
which showed a most potent influence of the plant. “ The
symptoms, ” says Dr. Payne, " connected with the female re
productive organs, and the consecutive moral conditions, are
very pronounced and peculiar.” The ovaries were the seat of
peculiar sharp and burning pains. " In the uterine region
there was severe pressing, bearing -down sensation, with the
feeling as if the whole internal parts would be forced through
33
502 LITHIUM CARBONICUM .

the vagina, making the desire irresistible to press the hands

firmly against the vulva to prevent the parts from escaping;
the whole genital organs felt as if swollen, with smarting and
irritation of the labia ; great tenderness to touch, and acrid
leucorrhoea. In three of the provers the uterus was found, on
examination , to be prolapsed and anteverted ." Two women
described the bearing - down sensation as not confined to the
pelvis, but causing a sense of dragging in the thorax even to
the shoulders. With it there was tenesmus of the bladder
and rectum, diarrhea (especially on first rising in the morn
ing ), and frequent micturition. The uterine symptoms began
to get worse about 5 p.m., and increased up to midnight. In
themale provers the sexual organs were less affected ; but there
was much oppression and palpitation of the heart.
Lilium has been too recently proved for any extensive ex
perience with it to have accumulated. It is obviously indi
eated for many congestive and even inflammatory conditions
of ovaries, uterus, vagina, and vulva. Dr. Payne speaks of
having found much benefit from it in subinvolution after
ehildbirth. It deserves the best attention of homeopathic
gynæcologists.
In an article in the nineteenth volume of the North American
Journal of Homoeopathy, Dr. Carroll Dunham , who is great at
comparisons, institutes some between Lilium on the one side
and Podophyllum , Sepia, Pulsatilla , Platina, and Helonias on
the other. Platina and Helonias seem best to correspond ,
the former to the mental symptoms and the latter to the
uterine condition induced by Lilium ; and each proved anti
dotal to it in these spheres respectively.
And now a few words upon the carbonate of lithia,
Lithium carbonicum ,
which we prepare by trituration .
A proving of this salt — almost entirely with the attenuations
—is given by Dr. Hering in the third and fourth volumes of
the American Homeopathic Review . The schema of sym
 LOBELIA INFLATA . 503

ptoms has been transferred to the first volume of the fourth

edition of the New Remedies.
Dr. Hering considers that the symptoms of the eyes, heart,,
and kidneys induced by Lithium are most significant; and in
these regions its curative powers seem to have found what
little scope they have, as you may see from Dr. Hale's thera
peutic article on the drug. Dr. Carroll Dunham has reported
a case of hemiopia from excessive use of the eyes - only the
lateral half of objects being visible—which was soon cured
by it.* This symptom is marked in its pathogenesis. The
same physician found great and lasting benefit from it in
his own case, when his heart was seriously damaged by acute
rheumatism.t
In the case of hemiopia the 30th dilution was given ; but
Dr. Dunham's own recovery ensued upon inhaling the emana
tions from the third trituration, as he was raising it to a
higher potency .
I have now to speak of the Indian tobacco,
Lobelia inflata .
From the powder as imported a tincture or triturations are
made for homeopathic practice.
Of the pathogenetic effects of Lobelia we have much infor
mation , from the frequent over -dosing with it which occurs
in the hands of "“ botanic ” practitioners. It was first proved
after the Hahnemannian manner by Dr. Alphonse Noack on
himself and five others. A treatise on the drug, embodying
the results of his experiments, appeared in the fifteenth
volume of the Hygea (1844 ), and has been translated into
English in the appendix to the first volume of the British
Journal of Homeopathy. There are articles on the drug,
containing and adding to Noack's materials, by Dr. Jeanes
in the Materia Medica of American Provings, and by Dr.
Hale in the fourth edition of his New Remedies.
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxvi, 489.
+ See Monthly Hom. Review , Feb., 1876.
504 LOBELIA INFLATA .

The name “Indian tobacco," commonly given to Lobelia,

fairly expresses its poisonous action . Like its namesake, it is
nauseant, depressant, relaxant ; and is used for these pur
poses as an enema in strangulated hernia or rigid os uteri.
But its main sphere of action is the pneumogastric nerve.
The symptoms of Noack's provers decisively point to this ;
and they have led to its successful use in many nervous affec
tions of the stomach and respiratory organs. The dyspepsia
in which Dr. Jeanes has often found it curative is charac
terised by a sense of weakness and oppression at the epi
gastrium , and at the same time some oppression at the chest.
There is often acidity, with heart- burn and lateritious urine,
and a sensation as of a lump in the throat-pit, impeding re
spiration and deglutition. Dr. Noack gives two cases of car
dialgia in which small doses of the mother tincture were very
effectual. The pain was pressive in character. It has also
been found beneficial in “ stomach -cough," and in the cough
of phthisis.
This brings us to the respiratory section of the pneumo
gastric tract, and to the use of Lobelia in asthma. The
testimony to its value here is abundant and unexception
able. It is true that asthma, so capricious in its behaviour
under climatic conditions, is hardly less so in relation to medi.
cines . It is difficult to say beforehand when Lobelia will do
good ; but when it does, the relief in the paroxysm is rapid,
and even a permanent cure is occasionally obtained. What is
the rationale of its action here ? Dr. Hyde Salter * supposed
that it relaxed the bronchial spasm in virtue of its nauseating
property, as Tartar emetic would do it ; saying that it rarely
relieves the paroxysm before it induces its physiological
effects. But he has not shown us that Tartar emetic could be
substituted for it with similar results. Elliotson , t Pereira ,
and Ringer, on the other hand, recommend the use of small
doses (mv) at the commencement, gradually increased up
* On Asthma, 2nd ed. ( 1868 ).
+ Lancet, Jan. 23, 1833 , April 15, 1837 .
 LOBELIA INFLATA . 505

to the point of physiological effect, and then suspended.

The former physician has found too large a dose aggravate
the dyspnea. Then Darwin tells how
“ fell Lobelia's suffocating breath
Loads the dank pinions of the gale with death . "
And one of the provers, who took the tincture in tea -spoon
ful doses every fifteen minutes until nearly an ounce had been
ingested, without exciting vomiting, complained of a general
tightness of the chest, with short and somewhat laborious
breathing. In the other provers the influence of the drug
seemed mainly expended on the stomach ; but where the re
spiration was affected, it was always with embarrassment. Dr.
Phillips also speaks of “ extreme spasmodic difficulty of
breathing ” as attending the distressing condition induced by
over-dosing with Lobelia. I am inclined, therefore, to think
that it acts homeopathically in asthma. It is a confirmation
of this view that it often gives relief when administered in
minute and even infinitesimal doses-from the second to the
sixth dilution - as I myself can testify.
Dr. Jeanes speaks highly of Lobelia in asthma : but when
be comes to narrate a case , and to give characteristics, it seems
to be the paroxysmal dyspnea of emphysema which he has in
mind . “The symptoms," he writes, “ which I have found
most strongly to indicate the lobelia are," besides the gastric
phenomena already enumerated , “ constant dyspnoa, which is
increased by slight exertion, and aggravated so much by slight
exposures to cold as to form a kind of asthmatic paroxysm .”
Bähr also says that “ Lobelia inflata is more adapted to
emphysema than to asthma." I have seen it decidedly
beneficial so far as the sensations are concerned in this
affection.
These have been the practical applications of Lobelia.
There are, however, certain residuary phenomena in its patho
genesis which require noting. They are these :
1. Heat, fulness, and sometimes aching in the head .
2. Much dreaming, generally distressing.
506 LYCOPODIUM .

3. Hemiopia .
4. Scratching, burning, and dryness in the throat.
5. Pain as if a nail were driven through the pit of the
stomach to the spine, spreading right and left, with twisting
sensation .
6. Circumscribed burning pain at the edge of the right false
ribs, extending across the epigastrium and round to the left
scapula. The spot originally affected subsequently became
the seat of a violent boring pain, and felt as if paralysed.
7. Distension of abdomen , disordering respiration.
8. Diuresis.
9. Urine deposits a pink sediment, in which is a small
brown crystal resembling - under the microscope--- a gooseberry
( probably urate of ammonia ).
10. Distressing heaviness of the male genitals.
11. Prickling sensation through the whole body, extending
even to the fingers and toes.
Most of these are individual symptoms; but the fourth was
experienced by all the provers, and more from small than from
large doses. One of them could not go on with the experi
ment on account of it :: he says it “far exceeded in severity
that of Mezereum , Ledum, Polygonum, and Euphorbia ."
There is also in Teste a catalogue of symptoms which his
experience has furnished as those to which Lobelia is particu
larly adapted .
The analogies of Lobelia are Antimonium tartaricum ,
Digitalis, Ipecacuanha, and Tabacum .
I have already indicated the dilutions in which Lobelia has
done most service.

I now come to one of those curious medicines whose virtues

we owe almost entirely to the Hahnemannian process of tritu
ration. It is the club -moss,

Lycopodium .
The well-known unmoistenable powder, prepared from the
 LYCOPODIUM . 507
spores of the plant, is triturated for our use. The value of this
mode of preparation has been peculiarly demonstrated in the
case of Lycopodium by some microscopical researches carried on
by Mr. Isaac Thompson , of Liverpool. He found , on examina
tion of the powder, that it was made up of a number of little
particles, each about the oth of an inch in diameter,
and in shape like a nut. On pounding a small quantity in an
agate mortar, these nuts were found to be fractured , and their
contents dispersed. These the addition of a drop of water
showed to be oil- globules. It seems most probable that the
medicinal virtues of Lycopodium reside in this peculiar
oleaginous matter with which its sporules are filled ; and hence
the comparative inertness of all preparations of the drug which
do not involve complete fracture * or solution of the investing
envelope. No tincture but an ethereal one is found to effect
solution ; and for fracture even trituration with milk -sugar
must be prolonged — in the case of the first decimal — for at
least two hours .
The earliest record of pathogenetic effects due to Lycopo
dium is contained in the first edition of the Chronic Diseases,
where the drug has 891 symptoms. In the second edition the
number has swelled to 1608. Some of the additions are from
the fellow -observers Hahnemann acknowledges; but the ma
jority even of these are his own . There is an admirable study
of this pathogenesis by Mr. Pope in the seventeenth volume
of the British Journal of Homoeopathy ; and in the second
and eighteenth volumes there are further provings of it, the
former by Dr. Arnold, of Heidelberg, with the tincture,
the latter by Professor Martin of Jena and six of his pupils.
The provings last named were conducted with the crude
drug, and sometimes the first trituration . The general
symptoms are those of excitement,-quickened circulation ,
headache, increased appetite, more frequent evacuations,
stronger sexual desire. The chief local affinity manifested
was for the urinary organs. There was frequent and
• Rau had made the same statement many years ago ( Hygea, xiii, 284 ).
 508 LYCOPODIUM .

sometimes painful micturition ; and the urine was cloudy

and sedimentous, occasionally charged with mucus and even
blood .
This may be called the crude action of Lycopodium ; and
therewith correspond its traditional uses. These were confined
to urinary affections. In the spasmodic retention of urine of
children , and in catarrh of the bladder in adults, it had con
siderable repute as a remedy even before Hahnemann's tritu.
ration developed its more extensive powers .
When we turn to the proving in the Chronic Diseases, a very
different scene is manifested . Instead of acute disorder, we
are looking upon gradually advancing chronic disease : instead
of excitement we have depression and decay. Whether we
regard the phenomena as genuine pathogenetic effects of the
drug, or ( which seems to me more probable) as symptoms of
the patients to whom it was proving beneficial, in either case
they picture its sphere and kind of action. Mental, nervous,
and bodily weakness ; sallow complexion ,and cold extremities;
>

anorexia , slow and depressed digestion, flatulence, and consti

pation ; a passive catarrh of the air- passages ; and an un .
healthy state of the skinare the morbid conditions presented
to us. This is the general character of the profounder action
of Lycopodium . Let us pass on to fix its sphere as a remedy
from clinical experience.
We may lay it down that Lycopodium has no direct neurotic
or hæmatic influence. It is a purely vegetative remedy ,affecting
the three great tracts of mucous membrane with their cuta
neous continuation.
1. The digestive canal, with the liver, is the most important
seat of the action of Lycopodium . There is a form of dyspepsia
in which it is quite specific. A typical case of this is related
by Dr. Hutchinson in the twenty -fifth volume of the British
Journal of Homæopathy. It is so illustrative of the medicine
that I will read you the patient's description of her sufferings.
She complained of “ pain under the ribs and all round the
waist, with shooting pains up the shoulder -blades ; pain across
 LYCOPODIUM . 509

the stomach and straight down on each side of it, sometimes

very severe ; nausea ; the food often thrown up, with a sour
and then a bitter taste ; water-brash ; obstinate constipation ;
very painful hæmorrhoids, with great loss of blood ; coldness
in the extremities ; cramp in the legs and thighs ; the action
of the kidneys is undue and most disturbing at night. The
last two nights I have not closed my eyes, and the pain has
been increasing. My complexion is deadly pale, with a mix
ture of ash and yellow combined.” This condition had lasted
two months or more. Lycopodium 12 was prescribed twice
a day, and the diet regulated. In a week the pain had sub
sided, and the other symptoms were disappearing ; and she
was soon restored to health ,
The constituent elements of such dyspepsia occasionally
appear separately , and often require this remedy. In water
brash it will frequently prove curative. For flatulence the
choice generally lies between Lycopodium and Carbo vegeta
bilis. I think the former most suitable when the distension
takes place in the intestines, the latter when the wind accumu
lates in the stomach, oppressing the breathing. Dr. Bayes
has lately noted some additional features of the flatulence of
Lycopodium .* It is incarcerated , causing bloating and dis
tension ; the pain is referred to the right hypochondrium and
intestines ; and palpitation during digestion is often com
plained of. I may add that constipation is nearly always an
accompanying symptom . For this trouble itself Lycopodium
stands very high as a remedy. Teste commends it strongly
in the constipation - sometimes so obstinate-of young
children . He also praises it in a very different condition of
the bowels, viz. that most dangerous enteritis which is set
up in infants by the ingestion of food which they cannot
digest. I have more than once verified this recommendation .
I should mention that this physician thinks Lycopodium to
correspond best to the indigestions caused by heavy farinaceous
and fermentable food .
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxx, 153.
 508 LYCOPODIUM .

sometimes painful micturition ; and the urine was cloudy

and sedimentous, occasionally charged with mucus and even
blood .
This may be called the crude action of Lycopodium ; and
therewith correspond its traditional uses. These were confined
to urinary affections. In the spasmodic retention of urine of Tale
children , and in catarrh of the bladder in adults, it had con.
siderable repute as a remedy even before Hahnemann's tritu
ration developed its more extensive powers.
When we turn to the proving in the Chronic Diseases, a very
different scene is manifested. Instead of acute disorder, we and
are looking upon gradually advancing chronic disease : instead
of excitement we have depression and decay. Whether we
regard the phenomena as genuine pathogenetic effects of the
drug, or (which seems to me more probable) as symptoms of
the patients to whom it was proving beneficial, in either case
they picture its sphere and kind of action. Mental, nervous,
and bodily weakness ; sallow complexion , and cold extremities;
anorexia , slow and depressed digestion, flatulence, and consti
pation ; a passive catarrh of the air- passages; and an un
healthy state of the skin — are the morbid conditions presented
to us. This is the general character of the profounder action
of Lycopodium . Let us pass on to fix its sphere as a remedy
from clinical experience.
We may lay it down that Lycopodium has no direct neurotic
or bæmatic influence. It is a purely vegetative remedy ,affecting 24
the three great tracts of mucous membrane with their cuta
neous continuation .
1. The digestive canal, with the liver, is the most important
seat of the action of Lycopodium . There is a form of dyspepsia
in which it is quite specific. A typical case of this is related ‫ܳܐܶܡ ܃‬
by Dr. Hutchinson in the twenty - fifth volume of the British 1
Journal of Homæopathy. It is so illustrative of the medicine
that I will read you the patient's description of her sufferings.
She complained of “ pain under the ribs and all round the
waist, with shooting pains up the shoulder -blades ; pain across
 LYCOPODIUM . 509

the stomach and straight down on each side of it, sometimes

very severe ; nausea ; the food often thrown up, with a sour
and then aa bitter taste ; water- brash ; obstinate constipation ;
very painful hæmorrhoids, with great loss of blood ; coldness
in the extremities; cramp in the legs and thighs; the action
of the kidneys is undue and most disturbing at night. The
last two nights I have not closed my eyes, and the pain has
been increasing. My complexion is deadly pale, with a mix
ture of ash and yellow combined .” This condition had lasted
two months or more. Lycopodium 12 was prescribed twice
a day, and the diet regulated. In a week the pain had sub
sided, and the other symptoms were disappearing ; and she
was soon restored to health .
The constituent elements of such dyspepsia occasionally
appear separately, and often require this remedy. In water
brash it will frequently prove curative. For flatulence the
choice generally lies between Lycopodium and Carbo vegeta
bilis. I think the former most suitable when the distension
takes place in the intestines, the latter when the wind accumu
lates in the stomach , oppressing the breathing. Dr. Bayes
has lately noted some additional features of the flatulence of
Lycopodium .* It is incarcerated, causing bloating and dis
tension ; the pain is referred to the right hypochondrium and
intestines ; and palpitation during digestion is often com
plained of. I may add that constipation is nearly always an
accompanying symptom . For this trouble itself Lycopodium
stands very high as a remedy. Teste commends it strongly
in the constipation - sometimes so obstinate - of young
children. He also praises it in a very different condition of
the bowels, viz . that most dangerous enteritis which is set
up in infants by the ingestion of food which they cannot
digest. I have more than once verified this recommendation .
I should mention that this physician thinks Lycopodium to
correspond best to the indigestions caused by heavy farinaceous
and fermentable food .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxx, 153.
 508 LYCOPODIUM.

sometimes painful micturition ; and the urine was cloudy

and sedimentous, occasionally charged with mucus and even
blood .
This may be called the crude action of Lycopodium ; and
therewith correspond its traditional uses. These were confined
to urinary affections. In the spasmodic retention of urine of
children , and in catarrh of the bladder in adults, it had con
siderable repute as a remedy even before Hahnemann's tritu.
ration developed its more extensive powers .
When we turn to the proving in the Chronic Diseases, a very
different scene is manifested. Instead of acute disorder, we
are looking upon gradually advancing chronic disease : instead
of excitement we have depression and decay. Whether we
regard the phenomena as genuine pathogenetic effects of the
drug, or (which seems to me more probable) as symptoms of
the patients to whom it was proving beneficial, in either case
they picture its sphere and kind of action. Mental, nervous,
and bodily weakness ; sallow complexion, and cold extremities ;
anorexia , slow and depressed digestion, flatulence, and consti
pation ; a passive catarrh of the air-passages; and an un
healthy state of the skin - are the morbid conditions presented
to us. This is the general character of the profounder action
of Lycopodium . Let us pass on to fix its sphere as a remedy
from clinical experience.
We may lay it down that Lycopodium has no direct neurotic
or hæmatic influence. It is a purely vegetative remedy,affecting
the three great tracts of mucous membrane with their cuta
neous continuation .
1. The digestive canal, with the liver, is the most important
seat of the action of Lycopodium. There is a form of dyspepsia
in which it is quite specific. A typical case of this is related
by Dr. Hutchinson in the twenty -fifth volume of the British
Journal of Homæopathy. It is so illustrative of the medicine
that I will read you the patient's description of her sufferings.
She complained of “ pain under the ribs and all round the
waist, with shooting pains up the shoulder- blades ; pain across
 LYCOPODIUM. 509

the stomach and straight down on each side of it, sometimes

very severe ; nausea ; the food often thrown up, with a sour
and then aa bitter taste ; water -brash ; obstinate constipation ;
very painful hæmorrhoids, with great loss of blood ; coldness
in the extremities ; cramp in the legs and thighs ; the action
of the kidneys is undue and most disturbing at night. The
last two nights I have not closed my eyes, and the pain has
been increasing. My complexion is deadly pale , with a mix
ture of ash and yellow combined.” This condition had lasted
two months or more. Lycopodium 12 was prescribed twice
a day, and the diet regulated. In a week the pain had sub
sided, and the other symptoms were disappearing ; and she
was soon restored to health.
The constituent elements of such dyspepsia occasionally
appear separately, and often require this remedy. In water
brash it will frequently prove curative. For flatulence the
choice generally lies between Lycopodium and Carbo vegeta
bilis . I think the former most suitable when the distension
takes place in the intestines, the latter when the wind accumu
lates in the stomach, oppressing the breathing. Dr. Bayes
has lately noted some additional features of the flatulence of
Lycopodium . * It is incarcerated , causing bloating and dis
tension ; the pain is referred to the right hypochondrium and
intestines ; and palpitation during digestion is often com
plained of. I may add that constipation is nearly always an
accompanying symptom . For this trouble itself Lycopodium
stands very high as a remedy. Teste commends it strongly
in the constipation - sometimes so obstinate - of young
children. He also praises it in a very different condition of
the bowels, viz. that most dangerous enteritis which is set
up in infants by the ingestion of food which they cannot
digest. I have more than once verified this recommendation .
I should mention that this physician thinks Lycopodium to
correspond best to the indigestions caused by heavy farinaceous
and fermentable food .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxx , 153.
510 LYCOPODIUM .

Besides the above -named affections, acidity and heartburn

are prominent features of Lycopodium ; and it has the charac
teristic symptom of unconquerable sleep after dinner, followed
by great exhaustion. It is probable that some of its digestive
disturbance is due to its influence upon the liver. In Professor
Martin's provings, this organ frequently gave signals of
distress ; and Mr. Pope says that in old hepatic congestions
he has found Lycopodium more useful than any other medicine,
Sulphur perhaps excepted. Dr. Bayes states a similar . ex
perience .
2. In the respiratory sphere Lycopodium manifests great
power in what may be called “ chronic influenza : 9 i. e. where
catarrh becomes persistent, with much general weakness.
Some forms of chronic bronchitis would doubtless come
within this category ; though I cannot point out their charac
teristic indications for the drug. Teste commends it highly
for “chronic pneumonia, with purulent, foul-smelling expec
toration , even when one of the lungs (especially the left) has
become partially hepatised .” Mr. Pope adds that few
medicines are so valuable in pulmonary phthisis as this, when
6
perseveringly used. “ The cough," he says, “ the gastric
irritation, the exhaustion, and the intercurrent attacks of
pleurisy, are wonderfully mitigated by it.” It is probable that
the phthisis of this writer and the chronic pneumonia of the
former are the same disease. Dr. Meyhoffer, whose opinion
on respiratory affections is so weighty, says that he had no
opinion of Lycopodium until he was led to try it in
chronic pneumonia ; but since then he has had for it in
this disease and in chronic passive bronchitis the utmost
respect.
Dr. David Wilson has lately called our attention to the fan
like movement of the alæ nasi noted in the pathogenesis of
Lycopodium , which he believes to be a pathognomonic indi
cation for the choice of this drug in diseases of children and
young people. Much controversy was excited by the manner
in which Dr. Wilson put forward this statement ; but I cannot
 LYCOPODIUM . 511

in this instance join my good friends his assailants. There is

nothing à priori improbable in his statement. “ When this
symptom is clearly marked ," he writes, “ no matter through
what organ or tissue the symptoms of any attack of illness
may manifest themselves in children and young people, I
venture to submit that the whole group of the phenomena in
such attacks will be found under Lycopodium .” This is a pure
matter of experience ; and a good many cases have since been
published which go to confirm Dr. Wilson's statement. It is
of course in respiratory affections that this symptom is most
frequently present.
3. Of the action of Lycopodium on the urinary organs I
have already spoken . Dr. Arnold says that he has seen in
several cases an increase in the secretion of urine on the
administration of Lycopodium , especially when any dropsical
affection was present. He has likewise observed diminution
of the quantity of urine in cases where it was m morbidly in
creased . I find it the very best medicine where the patient is.
suffering from an excess of lithic acid gravel ; and look upon
copious sediments of this nature as one of the most unerring
indications for its choice in dyspepsia.
4. Lycopodium is very good for the intertrigo of children
and for dry porrigo capitis. It is said to be curative in
that scourge of Poland, the plica polonica ; and in pruritus.
ani.
With three additional observations I will conclude. First,
I would mention that the tincture has caused an inflammatory
rheumatism of the right fore -arm , wrist, hand, and fingers.
Secondly, that Dr. Bayes recommends it for syphilitic
ulcerations of the fauces, superficial but spreading ; and that
among the high dilutionists in America it is much thought of
in diphtheria when the deposit first invades the right tonsil
( in this distinguished from Lachesis). The third point is
more curious. Lycopodium has occasionally been suggested
for aneurism , but I had thought little of it, though in a case
treated by Dr. Madden and myself what seemed an aortic
.512 LYCOPUS VIRGINICUS .

aneurism ceased to be discoverable while we were giving the

medicine for the general health . But I have since seen most
striking results from it in an unmistakable carotid aneurism
in an old lady, for whose dyspeptic symptoms the remedy had
often proved serviceable. The shooting pains which accom .
panied the swelling disappeared in the first three days of
taking the Lycopodium ; and in a fortnight the enlargement
of the artery was reduced one half, at which point it has since
continued stationary, giving her no pain or inconvenience.
You will do well also to consider the list of symptoms
prefixed by Hahnemann to his pathogenesis, as indications
for the choice of Lycopodium in disease. They may yet yield
fresh therapeutic applications of this valuable drug.
The analogues of Lycopodium in the digestive sphere are
Bryonia and Nux vomica . I know no medicines really resem .
bling it as a whole.
The higher attenuations are those most used in practice. I
nearly always employ the twelfth .
I have another wolf's foot to bring before you, but botany
has saved us from confusion by slightly varying the nomen
clature. It is the bugle-weed,

Lycopus Virginicus.
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
Dr. Morrisson has enriched pathogenesy by a thorough
proving of Lycopus upon his own person , the account of which
you will find in the sixteenth volume of the Monthly Homi
pathic Review . It is rendered especially valuable by pulse
tracings having been obtained from the sphygmograph to show
the action of the drug upon the heart. There is also in
the second edition of Dr. Hale's New Remedies a short proving
of the drug by Dr. G. E. Chandler.
Lycopus has long had , among the " eclectic" practitioners of
America, the reputation of being an arterial sedative, somewhat
like Digitalis. Drs. Chandler and Morrisson both found it
 LYCOPUS VIRGINICUS . 513

exert an indubitable action upon the heart. In the former,

whose health was perfect, the strangeness of his cardiac
sensations, and the slowness of his pulse (which at one time
was only 48 ), led him to seek an examination ; when the first
sound was found to be absent, and replaced by the blowing
sound of mitral regurgitation . Dr. Morrisson's heart was
somewhat feeble, and its action inclined to intermit, ere he
commenced his proving ; but the pulse -tracing taken then was
of very healthy character compared with those which subse
quently appeared. The organ was first oppressed and then
depressed by the drug : the sphygmographic signs of debility
increased day by day until the proving was suspended, and
irregularity -- not mere intermission - of pulse became the rule
instead of the exception.
Dr. Hale says that Lycopus has become one of his most
favoured and trusted remedies in functional diseases of the
heart, especially when there is cardiac irritability with de
pressed force . Dr. Morrisson has recorded two cases of the
same kind in which the drug was very useful : in one of these
there was a great tendency to exophthalmos, showing the
cardiac symptoms to be those belonging to Graves' disease.
In the British Journal of Homoeopathy for April in the present
year is a case reported from Honolulu, in which double
valvular disease of the heart, with all its associated symptoms,
was so greatly relieved by the continued use of the medicine,
that the patient was able to return to work ; and, though some
abnormal sound continued audible, he considered himself in
perfect health . All this is very promising ; and the drug
should be fairly tested .
The dilutions from the first to the third decimal have been
those used — the provings having been conducted with full
doses of the mother -tincture.
Of the Magnesian salts two are used in homeopathic
practice. The carbonate,
512 LYCOPUS VIRGINICUS .

aneurism ceased to be discoverable while we were giving the

medicine for the general health. But I have since seen most
striking results from it in an unmistakable carotid aneurism
in an old lady, for whose dyspeptic symptoms the remedy had
often proved serviceable. The shooting pains which accom
panied the swelling disappeared in the first three days of
taking the Lycopodium ; and in a fortnight the enlargement
of the artery was reduced one half, at which point it has since
continued stationary, giving her no pain or inconvenience.
You will do well also to consider the list of symptoms
prefixed by Hahnemann to his pathogenesis, as indications
for the choice of Lycopodium in disease. They may yet yield
fresh therapeutic applications of this valuable drug.
The analogues of Lycopodium in the digestive sphere are
Bryonia and Nux vomica. I know no medicines really resem .
bling it as a whole.
The higher attenuations are those most used in practice. I
nearly always employ the twelfth.
I have another wolf's foot to bring before you, but botany
has saved us from confusion by slightly varying the nomen
clature. It is the bugle -weed ,

Lycopus Virginicus.
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
Dr. Morrisson has enriched pathogenesy by a thorough
proving of Lycopus upon his own person, the account of which
you will find in the sixteenth volume of the Monthly Homeo
pathic Review . It is rendered especially valuable by pulse
tracings having been obtained from the sphygmograph to show
the action of the drug upon the heart. There is also in
the second edition of Dr. Hale's New Remedies a short proving
of the drug by Dr. G. E. Chandler.
Lycopus has long had, among the " eclectic ” practitioners of
9

America, the reputation of being an arterial sedative, somewhat

like Digitalis. Drs. Chandler and Morrisson both found it
 LYCOPUS VIRGINICUS . 513

exert an indubitable action upon the heart. In the former,

whose health was perfect, the strangeness of his cardiac
sensations, and the slowness of his pulse (which at one time
was only 48 ), led him to seek an examination ; when the first
sound was found to be absent, and replaced by the blowing
sound of mitral regurgitation. Dr. Morrisson's heart was
somewhat feeble, and its action inclined to intermit, ere he
commenced his proving ; but the pulse-tracing taken then was
of very healthy character compared with those which subse
quently appeared. The organ was first oppressed and then
depressed by the drug : the sphygmographic signs of debility
increased day by day until the proving was suspended, and
irregularity -- not mere intermission - of pulse became the rule
instead of the exception.
Dr. Hale says that Lycopus has become one of his most
favoured and trusted remedies in functional diseases of the
heart, especially when there is cardiac irritability with de
pressed force. Dr. Morrisson has recorded two cases of the
same kind in which the drug was very useful : in one of these
:

there was a great tendency to exophthalmos, showing the

cardiac symptoms to be those belonging to Graves' disease.
In the British Journal of Homeopathy for April in the present
year is a case reported from Honolulu, in which double
valvular disease of the heart, with all its associated symptoms,
was so greatly relieved by the continued use of the medicine,
that the patient was able to return to work ; and, though some
abnormal sound continued audible, he considered himself in
perfect health . All this is very promising ; and the drug
should be fairly tested .
The dilutions from the first to the third decimal have been
those used -- the provings having been conducted with full
doses of the mother- tincture.
Of the Magnesian salts two are used in homeopathic
practice . The carbonate,
514 MAGNESIA MURIATICA .

Magnesia carbonica,
is prepared by trituration.
A pathogenesis of it appeared in the first edition of the
Chronic Diseases, containing 128 symptoms, probably observed
upon patients taking the twelfth dilution. In the second
edition the list has increased to 890. A few of the additions
are from Schreter and Wahle ; but the great bulk of them are
taken from a pathogenesis of 801 symptoms in the second
volume of Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre, -un
named, but supposed to proceed from the fertile manufactory
of “ Ng."
Magnesia, in its simple or carbonated form , is known only
as an antacid and mild laxative . Trousseau and Pidoux point
out that the evacuations produced by it are, at first, simple
liquid fæces ; but that its continued use sets up subacute
inflammation of the intestinal mucous membrane. It may
thus find homeopathic employment in some bowel-affections
of children. Dr. Guernsey says it is indicated when their
motions resemble the green of a frog pond. But the chief
use to which it has been put in the school of Hahnemann
is in the treatment of delaying and scanty menses, when,
on their appearance, they are of a dark colour and piteby
consistence .
The chloride of Magnesium ,

Magnesia muriatica,
is prepared by aqueous solution.
The first edition of the Chronic Diseases gives sixty-nine
symptoms to this salt. As the sixth dilution is recommended
for administration, they were possibly obtained from the third.
In the second edition, 749 symptoms are ascribed to it, -most
of the additions here also proceeding from Nenning through
Hartlaub and Trinks.
 MANGANUM . 515

Hahnemann thought that the virtues of sea-bathing might

be partly due to the large proportion of chloride of magnesium
contained in the water ; and considered the salt a powerful
antipsoric. It has hardly, however, fulfilled his anticipations;
though experience has sustained his recommendation of it in
“ knotty, hard, difficult, insufficient, and delaying stools,"
which sometimes (Dr. Guernsey says) crumble to pieces
directly they pass the anus. Noack and Trinks commend
it in chronic congestion and induration of the liver. Magnesia
muriatica also shares with Magnesia carbonica a uterine
action . Hahnemann indicates its use in “ hysterical uterine
and abdominal cramps, which extend even into the thighs
and are followed by leucorrhea ;" and Dr. Bayes speaks of
finding it very useful here, and in leucorrhea generally. He
gives the third or sixth dilution.
I have next to speak of the metal Manganesium, or
Manganum .
Triturations, or in the case of the acetate aqueous solutions,
are made for homeopathic use.
A pathogenesis of Manganese, obtained from the acetate,
appears in the sixth volume of the Materia Medica Pura. It
contains 89 symptoms from Hahnemann, and 242 from ten
fellow -observers. A second pathogenesis was published in the
second edition of the Chronic Diseases, adding to these the 124
symptoms recorded as obtained from the drug in Hartlaub
and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre.
Hahnemann's provings led him to think that Manganese would
prove indispensable in some of the most troublesome chronic
diseases, especially some insupportable pains in the periosteum
and joints, some weaknesses of the senses, and some affections of
the larynx and trachea. The proving of the binoxide since
instituted by Dr. Lembke, of Riga, on his own person - an
account of which is given by Hempel--confirms the first and
last of these actions, and shows it to affect the head much like
Ferrum .
 516 MENYANTHES TRIFOLIATA .

From the statements of Noack and Trinks it would seem

that Hahnemann's recommendations of Manganese have been
carried out with some success in inflammations of the bones,
periosteum , and joints ; and in chronic laryngeal disease. It
has also been used with some benefit in Eustachian deafness
and in chronic cutaneous eruptions. It is a medicine which
seems to deserve more attention than is at present given to it.
From some observations of its pathogenetic effects collected
by Pereira, it seems that in workmen engaged upon it it
produces paralysis of the motor nerves, beginning with
paraplegia. This differs from the paralysis of lead in not
causing colic or constipation, and from that of mercury in first
affecting the lower extremities, and in not exciting tremors of
the affected part. The sulphate has a decided action on the liver.
This organ was found inflamed in animals poisoned by it, and
both in these and in the human subject it acts as a vigorous
cholagogue. Dr. Leared has published a number of cases
showing the good effects of Manganese in pain after food
occuring in weakly females.
Besides these facts, sundry speculations have been
hazarded as to the value of the preparations of Manganese
in chloro -anæmia . I have read these with attention ; but am
not much impressed with the theoretical reasoning or with its
practical results.
I can say nothing as to this drug also of analogous medi
cines or dose.

I conclude this lecture with a few remarks on the buck.

bean, marsh -trefoil, or
Menyanthes trifoliata .
The tincture is prepared from the entire plant, dried.
There is a pathogenesis of Menyanthes in the fifth volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 28 symptoms from
Hahnemann , and 267 from nine others.
There is little in the proving which is characteristic ; and
 MENYANTHES TRIFOLIATA. 517

Menyanthes has rarely been employed in medicine. Hahne

mann recommends it in some forms of ague where the chill pre
dominates. Teste remarks, “ According to my own experience,
Menyanthes is most closely analogous to Drosera, except that
the effects of Drosera are more intense than those of Menyan
thes. Obscuration of sight, which is one of the first symptoms
of these drugs, developes itself alike under the influence of
one or the other. It is a sort of white mist, or vibrations,
which are sometimes so violent that they prevent sight, come
on irregularly, of varied duration , especially in the open air,
during a walk, and without any other sensation. I experienced
>

this symptom from either drug so violently, while walking on

the Boulevard, that I dared not cross lest I should be crushed
by the carriages. The pains of Drosera and Menyanthes are
likewise alike. In their action on the air-passages they differ
only in the degree of intensity. Menyanthes is little used, and
never will be used much . I have used it with success in a case
of amaurosis ; but there are few diseases where Menyanthes
is indicated which could not be cured much better with
Drosera. This opinion, however, is founded on my own im
pressions, which I am always willing to distrust.”

36
 LECTURE XXIX .
MERCURIUS .

I shall speak to -day of the various mercurial preparations,

massing them together under the common name of
Mercurius,
by which , and not by that of Hydrargyrum , the metal has
always been known to homeopathic therapeutics.
We use all the ordinary salts and compounds of Mercury,
triturating those that are insoluble, and dissolving the per
chloride - Mercurius corrosivus, as we call it - in rectified
spirit. But besides these we have two peculiar preparations
of the drug. One, known as Mercurius virus, is a tritu
ration of the metal with milk -sugar. It answers to the blue
pill and grey powder of ordinary practice, for which it is a
substitute in our hands. The other - Mercurius solubilis — is
a preparation of Hahnemann's own, and is known in Germany
by his name (Merc. sol. Hahnemanni). It is made by dis
solving metallic quicksilver in nitric acid , and then precipi
tating it from solution by caustic ammonia. The result is
an impure oxide, of doubtful and varying composition.
Therapeutically it is effective enough ; but from the chemical
side the Pharmacopæia seems justified in recommending its
displacement by Mercurius vivus, according (as it truly says)
to Hahnemann's own later practice. Mercurius solubilis is of
course prepared by trituration .
We have pathogeneses of most of the mercurial prepara
tions. Hahnemann experimented mainly with his own black
 MERCURIUS. 519

oxide,-in large doses, Noack says. In the first volume of

the last edition of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, 1264 symptoms
are credited to it, of which nearly half are his own, the rest
being furnished by eight associates. In the same place are
given 51 symptoms as effects of Mercurius corrosivus, and 45
of Cinnabar. The pathogenesis of the former has been com
pleted from toxicological records by Dr. Roth, in his Matière
Médicale, where he gives 577 symptoms; and of the latter
the sulphide of Mercury, vermilion - by Dr. Neidhard by means
of provings. The record of these last, which were carried
out on more than twenty persons and with various potencies
of the drug, is contained in Metcalf's Homoeopathic Provings.
The Lodide and Biniodide have also been proved in America.
There is an arrangement of the symptoms of the latter in
Hering's Materia Medica, and those of the former were pub
lished in pamphlet form . In neither case is information
given as to the doses used. Hahnemann appends to his
article 139 effects, taken from authors, of mercurial pre
66

parations” generally ; and this might now be considerably

increased from works on Materia Medica and elsewhere. Of
two special treatises on the ill effects of Mercury, those of
Dietrich in German , and of Mathias in English, I have
largely availed myself. I have also drawn upon the works
on the same subject of Habershon and Sigmond.
I have now to describe, on the basis afforded by these
sources of information, the pathogenetic effects of Mercury.
The field is such a wide one that you will pardon me if I
traverse it somewhat rapidly. It is only at controverted
points that I can stay to adduce evidence and discuss argu
ments ; but I will ask you to believe that I make no state
ment without having gone through these processes on my own
account beforehand. Even as it is, I find that any satisfactory
treatment of the subject will occupy an entire lecture, so that
I must ask you to wait for the therapeutics of Mercury
until next week .
I. When an unirritating preparation of Mercury is gra
520 MERCURIUS .

dually introduced into the system , before any local manifesta

tion of its influence occurs a profound change is being
wrought in the blood. Its full hæmatic effect is thus stated
by Dr. Headland , in his well-known treatise on the Action
of Medicines : - “ By some inscrutable chemical power, of
whose agency we know nothing, it is able to decompose
the blood : by some destructive agency it deprives it of
one third of its fibrin , one seventh of its albumen, one third
or more of its globules ; and at the same time loads it
with a fetid fatty matter, the product of decomposition.”
Trousseau and Pidoux well describe the cachexia which
results from this action . The blood loses colour and con
sistence ; pallor of the surface occurs, followed by ædema and
anasarca. All the symptoms of anæmia are present, such as
palpitation, sighing, breathlessness ; and in young females the
menses are suppressed , and chlorosis sets in. In other cases
ecchymoses and passive hæmorrhages appear.
With the early stage of this affection of the blood there is
slight pyrexia. Hahnemann, who in his treatise On Venereal
Diseases taught that the cure of syphilis depended on the
supervention of this " mercurial fever," thus describes it in his
own graphic and detailed manner :
“ The patient gets a metallic taste in the mouth , a disa
greeable smell in the nose, a painless audible rumbling in the
bowels, an earthy complexion, a pinched nose, blue rings
round the eyes, pale leaden coloured lips, an uninterrupted
or frequently recurring shuddering (always getting stronger)
that thrills deeply even into the interior of the body. His
pulse becomes small, hard, and very rapid ; there is an incli
nation to vomit, or at least nausea at everything, especially
at animal diet, but chiefly a very violent headache of a tearing
and pressive character, which sometimes rages without inter
mission in the occiput or over the root of the nose. The nose,
ears, hands, and feet are cold . The thirst is inconsiderable,
the bowels constipated, great sleeplessness, the short dreams
of a fearful character, accompanied by frequent slight perspi
 MERCURIUS . 521

rations. The weakness is extreme, as also the listlessness

and anxious oppression , which the patient thinks he never
before felt anything like. The eyes become sparkling as if
full of water, the nose is as if stuffed with catarrh ; the
muscles of the neck are somewhat stiff, as from rheumatism ;
the back of the tongue is whitish . At this period the patient
experiences, if all goes on well, some discomfort in swallow
ing, a shooting pain in the root of the tongue, on both sides
of the mouth a looseness or setting on edge of the teeth (the
gums recede a little towards the root of the teeth, become
somewhat spongy, red ,, painful, swollen ) ; there is a moderate
swelling of the tonsils and submaxillary glands, and a pecu
liar rancid odour from the mouth, without the occurrence ,
however, of a notable increase in the secretion of saliva, and
without diarrhea or immoderate perspiration.”
All this, you will observe, is prior to the full develop
ment of the first local effects — the stomatitis and salivation .
When the gums grow tender, the saturation of the system is
complete. This is shown by the effects which ensue in cer
tain morbid products and conditions when present. Indura
tions are resolved , and exudations of lymph absorbed ; on the
other hand , old cicatrices grow tender and may even reopen .
All the secretions at the same time tend to increase in quan
tity and greater fluidity in consistence.
II. If now the drug is continued, or if the patient be un
healthy or expose himself to cold, certain inflammations
are apt to arise. I think we must distinguish these from the
inflammations which the corrosive sublimate of Mercury is
capable of producing. It acts, like Arsenic and Iodine, by
its essentially irritant properties, selecting tissues and organs
for this influence by elective affinity. The blander prepara
tions of Mercury have no such property : yet it is well known
that stomatitis is much more readily induced by them than
by the perchloride ; and the same is true of certain other
affections. I shall, therefore, first of all describe the inflam
mations, ulcerations, and other effects specifically induced by
522 MERCURIUS.

Mercury as such ; and then mention the modifications and

additions which ensue when the perchloride is given.
In the light of this view , let us consider the phenomena
presented by mercurial poisoning in the several parts of the
body it affects . We will begin by studying its action on the
alimentary canal and its associated glands.
1. I think that the general action of Mercury on the ali
mentary canal may be stated as follows. The mildest degree
of its influence is shown in an increased secretion from the
whole mucous tract, and from the glands - salivary, pancreatic,
and hepatic - which open into it. The full constitutional
action is manifested in irritation with diminished secretion
often amounting to congestion or actual inflammation - along
the whole tract, but in some regions attacking chiefly the
mucous surface, in others the glandular involutions. Thus
in the mouth we have intense stomatitis, while the salivary
glands secrete vigorously. In the small intestine, on the other
hand, the mucous membrane shows little sign of disturbance,
while the liver often becomes congested, and its secretion
diminished .
Let us see how far these principles hold good in the several
portions of the tract.
a. The mercurial stomatitis I trust that you have never seen
in any severe form ; but it is necessary that we should have
it before us. I will describe it in the graphic language of
Dr. George Wood. He thus pictures the onset of the affection :
“ The first phenomenon presented is often a whitish appear
ance of the lower gums, probably owing to opacity of the
epithelium . Soon afterwards the gums are seen to be some
what swollen, rising up between the teeth , and reddened at
their edges. At the same time they are somewhat tender to
the touch, and not unfrequently pain is produced at the roots
of the teeth by firmly closing the jaws. A metallic taste,
as of copper in the mouth, is also among the first symptoms;
and I have repeatedly been able to detect the approach of
salivation by the peculiar fetor of the breath, before any other
 MERCURIUS . 523

sign had presented itself. It not unfrequently happens that

the above symptoms have existed for some time before any
increase of saliva appears ; and occasionally there is at first
seen a dryish condition of the tongue.” The second stage he
thus depicts : “ The gums, tongue, cheeks and fauces, one or
all, swell and become painful; deglutition is painful; the
teeth, if carious, begin to ache ; the tongue is somewhat
furred , and indented by the teeth at its edges ; the saliva is
discharged copiously ; the salivary glands swell, together with
the neighbouring areolar tissue, and the breath is very offen-.
sive, having a peculiar fetor which distinguishes the mercu
rial sore -mouth from all other analogous affections.” If the
disease run on, it reaches a third stage, which Dr. Wood de 1

scribes in this manner : “ The swelling, internal and external,

increases ; the tongue sometimes projects from the mouth, in
consequence of its greatly increased bulk, and is covered with
a very thick , soft, yellowish white fur, extremely offensive to
the smell ; the parotid and submaxillary glands become much
enlarged and painful; the patient cannot open his jaws, swal
lows with great difficulty and pain, and is wholly unable to
articulate ; the saliva streams from the mouth ; the odour of
the breath is insupportably fetid, and sometimes scents the
whole apartment ; ulceration of the gums, cheeks, and
tongue takes place, with occasionally copious and exhausting
hæmorrhage; the teeth loosen and fall out ; and even gangrene
of the soft parts, and necrosis of the alveolar processes, some
times occurs . ” This gangrene may extend to the face and
neck ; and, though most commonly spreading from the
mouth or throat, sometimes begins at once on the external
surface .
Sir Thomas Watson calls attention to the special character
of this mercurial inflammation. “ It is," he says, " superficial,
spreading, erysipelatous : it leads to ulceration without any
distinct occurrence of suppuration ; the ulcers enlarge." I
would notice also the peculiar fætor of the breath , as con
nected with the fatty matter of the same character we have
524 MERCURIUS .

seen formed in the blood ; and the tendency to hæmorrhage.

Observe, moreover, that while the drug is thus raging on the
mucous surface, the salivary glands are simply stimulated, and
pour out their secretion profusely. Orfila — and he is followed
by Trousseau and Pidoux - states that in mercurial salivation
there is no true inflammation of the glands, but only effusion
into the cellular tissue around them . But there is evidence
that (in its ordinary forms) the drug can cause hyperæmia of
these organs ; and in one case, when under the poisonous
influence of the perchloride they enlarged and became tender,
the salivary secretion was diminished .
A word as to the contents of the mouth . The tongue is
affected like the cavity generally, so far as its mucous mem
brane is concerned . The submucous tissue is also involved
in the inflammation, as shown by the great enlargement of the
organ ; but I do not know that the muscular substance is
affected. As to the teeth, there is much need of a thorough
and unprejudiced study of the influence of Mercury upon
them. Does it attack them immediately, setting up true
caries ? or do they loosen and fall out as a consequence of the
degenerated state of the gums, themselves remaining entire ?
The latter alternative seems at present to be that best sup
ported by evidence.
b. The throat may be either acutely or chronically affected
by Mercury. The acute affection is identical with the mercurial
stomatitis, which it commonly accompanies : there is much
swelling always, ulceration often, gangrene sometimes. The
chronic angina of Mercury is graphically described by Die
trich. It is characterised by a dark or bluish redness ; great
sense of dryness, with hawking of tenacious, glassy mucus ;
and enlargement of the mucous follicles.
c. The stomach is, so far as I know , affected by the per
chloride only of all the mercurial preparations. The irritant
action of this salt, however, is dynamic and elective, and not
merely chemical and local ; for it is exerted as certainly when
the poison is injected into the veins, or applied to a wound, as.
 MERCURIUS . 525

when it is swallowed. The gastric mucous membrane in

variably presents the living symptoms and post -mortem
appearances of acute inflammation. Ulceration, however, is
rarely present, except when the drug is introduced directly
into the stomach, as we have seen with Kali bichromicum .
d. The small intestines are very rarely inflamed by Mercury ;
but the two great glands which pour their secretions into
this part of the bowel suffer from the drug in a very consider
able degree.
( a.) The physiological similarity between the salivary glands
and the pancreas makes it probable that — as with Iodine and
Iris — a drug which powerfully influences the one will affect
the other also. That it is so in the case of Mercury is argued
by Dietrich on the ground of the symptoms occasionally occur
ring during life ; wbile Hughes Bennett in experiments on
animals, and Wibmer in examination of the bodies of those
who have been long treated by mercurial frictions, have found
the gland reddened and hypertrophied. The most striking,
case, however, is one cited by Dr. H. Wood. “ A woman after
excessive salivation experienced deep-seated epigastric pain
and heat, with nausea , thirst, and fever, and voided thin stools
containing liquid resembling salivary fluid. At the post
mortem the pancreas was found weighing eight ounces, red ,,
congested, and with its duct dilated.”
(6.) That Mercury acts upon the liver, and is a cholagogue,
would have been thought till lately too obvious to need demon
stration . But the experiments conducted by Drs. Scott and
Handfield Jones, and those carried out by a committee of
the British Medical Association under the presidency of Dr.
Hughes Bennett, ascertained the fact that in the lower animals,
at least Mercury rather diminishes the secretion of bile than
increases it. This of course is no proof that the same thing
happens in the human subject; but it establishes a strong
probability that it is .
so . Nor is it any evidence to the con
trary that an increased quantity of bile is found in the stools
after the administration of mercurials. It must be remem
526 MERCURIUS .

bered that this secretion is ordinarily reabsorbed after being

poured into the duodenum ; and its presence in a free state
and in undue proportion in the fæces may simply mean that
it has been hurried on through the bowels without their being
allowed to take it up. This seems more probable than that
there should be any notable augmentation of the large quan .
tity of bile—many pounds in the twenty -four hours — which
is naturally formed. But it is not shown hereby that Mercury
has no action on the liver. On the contrary, the diminished
secretion may well be the sign of the congestion of the gland
which post -mortem examination shows to be present in acute
mercurial poisoning. This may be accompanied by jaundice,
of the occurrence of which there are several cases on record,*
and in continued exposure to the malign influence it may go
on to enlargement and induration .
e. While Mercury has little influence upon the small intes
tines, the large - cæcum , colon, and rectum - are a special seat
of its influence . Diarrhea not unfrequently accompanies or
replaces salivation ; and the tendency to tenesmus shows that
its seat is the lower portion of the bowel. In poisoning by
corrosive sublimate the whole tract exhibits marks of intense
inflammation, going on to ulceration and sloughing ; and the
symptoms during life and appearances after death are often
those of acute dysentery.
This is the place in which to speak of the effect of Mercury
upon the intestinal evacuations. The stools produced by it
are of various characters. When given as a purgative in the
form of calomel or blue- pill, it causes copious fluid evacua
tions, of a dark brown or yellowish colour - sometimes, espe
cially in children, of a green hue. I suppose these evacuations
* Taylor, On Poisons, 1st ed., p. 396. Johnson, Cheyne, and Chap
man , quoted by Black, in Introduction to the Study of Homæopathy, p.
119. Budd On Diseases of the Liter, 3rd ed., p . 478. Hempel, p. 617.
+ Taylor, op . cit., p. 397. Graves, cited in Med . Times and Gazette,
xix, 452. Overbeck, in Ibid ., Jan. 18, 1862. Wibmer, cited by Heippel,
P. 506 .
 MERCURIUS . 527

to consist of an increased quantity of the biliary and other

intestinal secretions. The green “ calomel stools ” of children
are generally supposed to consist of bile, altered in tint by
superabundant acid in the intestines. Others, however, con
sider them to be due simply to the presence of the subsulphide
of Mercury in the fæces, their colour being a phenomenon
analogous to the blackness of the stools in those who are
taking iron. The objection to this view is that they have
been induced by doses of calomel far too small to cause any
general coloration of the fæces. The purging caused by mer.
curials always tends to assume the dysenteric character ;
and in acute poisoning by corrosive sublimate the stools
are scanty, frequent, and bloody, just as in the idiopathic
affection .
2. The respiratory mucous membrane is not a special seat
of the influence of Mercury. Conjunctivitis, however, is no
uncommon manifestation of its action : it occurred in
Overbeck's experiments on animals, and in Hahnemann's
proving of Mercurius solubilis and Hering's of the biniodide.
Coryza sometimes occurs in mercurialization ; and one of the
dogs poisoned by corrosive sublimate in Dr. Hughes Bennett's
experiments had constant muco -purulent discharge from the
Bronchitis and pneumonia have also been observed in
poisoning by this substance ; and the latter generally compli.
cates the febrile mercurial eruptions of which we shall speak
presently.
These phenomena, however, appear far less frequently from
Mercury than from Arsenic and Iodine.
3. The reverse of the comparison obtains in the genito
urinary tract, which , according to Christison , suffers more
from corrosive sublimate than from Arsenic. The kidneys are
much affected by this poison. Suppression of urine is a very
common phenomenon ; and post -mortem investigation shows
it to be connected with acute congestion or inflammation of
the secreting structure of these organs. The urine is albu
minous during life, and the patients die with all the symptoms
528 MERCURIUS.

of uræmic poisoning. Lower down, we have frequent and

painful micturition ; and sometimes swelling and black
ness of the scrotum, with erection of the penis. This too
is from the bichloride : but from Mercurius solubilis two of
Hahnemann's provers had balanitis and balanorrhoea ; and
another (Helbig ) reports the following symptom : — “ A num
ber of small red vesicles at the termination of the glans penis
behind the prepuce, becoming converted into ulcers, which
break open and pour forth a yellowish white, staining, strong
smelling matter ; afterwards the larger ulcers bled, and when
touching them, a pain was felt in them which affected the
whole body ; they were round ; their edges, which looked like
raw flesh, overlapped the ulcers, the base of which was
>
covered with a cheesy lining . ” A similar symptom was er
perienced by one of the provers of Cinnabar.
These phenomenona are of much interest with reference to
the relation of Mercury to chancre. Other facts are men
tioned by Trousseau and Pidoux which bear on the same
point. They allow that Mercury may cause serious ulcera
tion at the side of the penis or in the vulva. They relate
how a dog whom Bretonneau had mercurialized, copulating
with one of his kind, had his penis swelled, inflamed , ul.
cerated, and finally gangrenous. And they state that women
laboring under puerperal fever, and treated with mercurial
frictions, were liable to get membranous inflammation of the
vulva followed by sphacelus.
4. The only irritant influence produced by Mercury on the
serous membranes is seen in poisoning by corrosive subli.
mate. Inflammation of the peritoneum and effusion into its
sac is here a frequent feature ; and a similar condition has
once been set up by it in the arachnoid .
5. I have now to speak of the action of Mercury on the
skin . I have already mentioned its diaphoresis ; and will only
add that the secretion is often vitiated as well as increased,
being sometimes sour, sometimes fætid. But whenever Mer.
cury has been given to any large extent in disease, there
 MERCURIUS . 529

have been seen occasional instances of its power of causing

cutaneous eruptions. These have been noticed by several
writers,and especially by Pearson, whose “ eczema mercuriale ”
-a form of eczema rubrum — is classical. But the fullest
account of them is given by Alley, in his Observations on the
Hydrargyria (London, 1810) . By this name he denotes the.
vesicular disease arising from the exhibition of Mercury. He
describes it as ocurring in three forms . The first is a rose
olous efflorescence , with minute vesiculation, and without
constitutional symptoms. The second form is distinctly
febrile ; and in this, in its appearance , and in its catarrhal
complications closely resembles measles. In the third variety
the fever is more intense, the fauces are much involved, actual
pneumonia is present, and the appearance of the surface is
like that of vesicular erysipelas. The cuticle, and often the
hair and nails, exfoliate subsequently. Other observers have
seen pustulation occur.
6. Dietrich states that periostitis is a not uncommon effect
of the long -continued use of Mercury. Pereira considers
that this affection is rather to be ascribed to the venereal
disease for which the drug had been administered. But
Graves affirms that periostitis attacked patients who had taken
a great deal of Mercury, even if they had never been affected
with syphilis, as often as they took cold ; and almost all
later observers admit this action of the poison. Trousseau
and Pidoux mention a case of a worker in quicksilver who
suffered as severely from nocturnal bone-pains as if he were
syphilitic, which he was not.
These workmen in Mercury give us many opportunities of
observing the profounder and more lasting effects of the
mineral on the frame. Thus it has been noted of those
who labour in the quicksilver mines of Idria that they are
liable to congestion, followed by enlargement or atrophy of
the liver ; inflammation and abscess of the lymphatic glands ;
neuralgia of the fifth pair ; various eruptions and ulcers of
the skin ; and swellings of the salivary glands, periosteum,
530 MERCURIUS .

and bones. * But the most striking effects seen here are
neurotic in seat and nature; and of these I have yet to
speak .
III. The neurotic effects of Mercury are manifest chiefly
in the musculo -motor and the ideational and emotional
spheres.
1. The mercurial tremor is as characteristic an action
of the drug as its salivation . It is chiefly seen in workmen
at quicksilver mines, or in trades — as water-gilding — where
the metal is much used. Merat's account of the affection is
景
followed by most writers . * The disease, he states, may begin
suddenly ; but in general it makes its approaches by slow
steps. The first symptom is unsteadiness of the arms, then
quivering, finally tremors, the several movements of which
become more and more extensive until they resemble con
vulsions, and render it difficult or impossible for the patient to
walk, to speak, or even to chew. All voluntary motions, such as
carrying a morsel to the mouth , are effected by several violent
starts. The arms are generally attacked first, and also most
severely. The tremors have been compared to those of
chorea, of delirium tremens, and of paralysis agitans. Of the
last Watson says : “ The mercurial tremor consists in a sort of
convulsive agitation of the voluntary muscles, which is most
violent when efforts are made to move the limbs by the help
of those muscles ; whenever, in fact, volition is brought to
bear upon them . It differs, therefore, from the shaking
palsy, inasmuch as the tremor ceases when the muscles are
supported, or are not brought into action.” The concomitant
symptoms of the trembling are a peculiar brown tint of the
whole body, dry skin, constipation and flatus, but no colic.
The pulse is always slow. A similar tremor is caused by
Iodine .
2. The milder effects of Mercury in the ideational and
emotional sphere are thus described by Dr. G. Wood : - " The
* Stillé, Mat. Med ., in loc.
+ Appendix to his Traité de la colique metallique.
 MERCURIUS . 531

most prominent nervous phenomenon of mercurialization is

an increased susceptibility to impressions ; slight causes pro
ducing a disturbance of the mental equanimity, and un
pleasant influences of all kinds having more than their
ordinary effect. A fretful, peevish state of mind , and irri
table condition of temper are not uncommon ; and restless
ness, wakefulness, and general uneasiness are frequently
added to the other sufferings." Cinnabar is said by its provers
to cause wakefulness by night, and somnolence by day. The
graver cerebral symptoms are chiefly seen in those in whom
mercurial tremor is most common ; they are sleeplessness, loss
of memory , delirium (often like that of alcoholism ), apathy.
The sufferers may die comatose and hemiplegic ; and the
cerebral hemispheres are found after death the subjects of
softening, with effusion into the ventricles.
Such are the pathogenetic effects of Mercury. I will pro
ceed no farther to -day, but will reserve all additional remarks
upon the subject until I come to speak next week of its
therapeutic applications.
 LECTURE XXX.

MERCURIUS (continued) .
At our last meeting we considered in some detail the patho
genetic action of Mercury. There was brought before us a
metal which ( save in its corrosive preparations) has no irri
tant action on the living tissue, and exerts its primary in
fluence upon the blood. It there sets up a series of changes
involving spoliation , liquefaction, and decomposition ; and
thereupon follow certain local affections, mainly of the mu
cous membranes and the skin . These are of a low and diffuse
inflammatory character, and readily pass into suppuration,
ulceration , and gangrene.
Mercury has other actions, of which I shall speak in time;
and its corrosive sublimate has its own specific irritations,
which we shall see applied to practice as we go on . But I am
desirous of fixing your special attention on this general in
fluence of the metal, as it is that whereby it has played so
great a part in the history of medicine, and whereby it has
wrought so great ruin and destruction among mankind. With
the exception of bloodletting, I know of no more mischievous
treatment ever devised than mercurialization, as shown by
stomatitis and ptyalism . It was bad enough to rob aa man of a
large proportion of his vital Auid ; but it was intensifying the
injury indeed to poison the remainder. Hundreds of deaths,
and hundreds of thousands of ruined healths — to say nothing
of temporary suffering and disease — have attested its in
fluence all over Europe. It is little wonder that the wiser
practice of the present day tends more and more to abandon
 MERCURIUS . 533

its use. The change is indicated in the two editions of Sir

Thomas Watson's classical Lectures which appeared in 1857
and in 1871 respectively. In the former Mercury takes rank
after venesection in the treatment of most inflammations ; in
the latter it has followed its principal into the limbo of doubt
ful and perilous means of practice. The same abandonment
has largely, though not universally, taken place in the treat
ment of syphilis.
What is the reason of this pernicious effect of a drug
supposed to be given as a medicine - an effect unique in its
instance ? Arsenic and Iodine are far more potent as poisons ;
yet they have not wrought this mischief. Any injurious
effects they have had have been (so to speak) extraneous and
incidental: by proper dosage and mode of administration
they have readily been avoided . But the ill-doing of Mercury
has been an essential part of its use, and so inherent therein
that because of it that use itself has been dropped. The fact
is that when Mercury has been employed (as it most largely
has been) in the treatment of syphilitic and of inflammatory
affections, it has been its physiological action that has been
used for the purpose . The cure has been sought, not directly,
but through the medium of “ salivation " —that is, by the
full constitutional influence of the drug as implied by that
phenomenon. Thus, instead of the poison being transformed
into a medicine, it has been used as a poison ; and hence its
prejudicial effects. When it is now employed in this way , the
nature of its action is recognised, and it is pushed to as slight
an extent as possible. To “ touch the gums now is just to
excite the mercurial fever which we described in Hahnemann's
words, and which he, at the time he wrote, conceived to be
necessary (and as much as was necessary ) for the cure of all
syphilitic manifestations. This is to lessen the mischief,
indeed ; yet mischief it still is . It is still doing evil that good
may come; and though such a proceeding is not so rigidly
proscribed in medicine as in morals, yet it is only to be
adopted to avert greater evils, and with full knowledge and
35
534 MERCURIUS .

circumspect discreetness in its application. In our hands who

aim at specific indications — who seek to absorb all physio
logical into therapeutical action, such an employment of a drug
must be, if ever resorted to, a rare and regretted exception to
our general practice. We should rather turn the bane into
the antidote, and use Mercury to cure instead of to cause the
morbid conditions it is capable of setting up, when , as not
unfrequently happens, they come before us from other causa
tion .
That we have succeeded in doing this appears from the
different estimation in which the medicine is held in the two
schools of practice. It has become, as I have said , quite a
badge of the more advanced section of the old practice to
renounce the use of Mercury in disease. It is declared to
have no influence on the liver ; to be at least unnecessary in
syphilis; and to act perniciously in most acute inflammations.
On the other hand, the applications of it which are made
according to our law and in our doses are continually afford
ing us satisfaction . Few medicines are so frequently in our
hands ; and in none have we more thorough confidence . This
looks aa little as if we had found the clue to the right use of
this and other poisons.
For the therapeutical as for the physiological effects of
Mercury, I can refer you to certain special sources of informa
tion . There are essays on the subject by Dr. Quin in the second
volume of the Annals, and by Dr. Leadam in the twelfth
>

volume of the British Journal of Homæopathy : you may also

with advantage consult a paper by Dr. Gerson , “On the
various Mercurial Preparations," which has been translated
in the eighth volume of the North American Journal. A good
summary of the then recognised homeopathic uses of the
drug is contained in the first volume of Hartmann's Practiol
Observations. But perhaps the best way of appreciating the
place and value assigned to Mercury in our practice is to look
through Bähr's System of Therapeutics, and see what and how
numerous are the diseases for which he indicates it, and where
 MERCURIUS . 535

it may be applied with best advantage. We shall see repro

duced in such a list the whole series of physiological effects
which on the last occasion passed before us. Let us now take
them in order.
I. The hæmatic effects of Mercury serve rather as additional
indications for its choice than as pictures of diseases to which
it is homeopathie. Scurvy and chlorosis are the only con
ditions of the latter kind I know ; and the former is so satis
factorily met by dietetic means, and the latter by the judicious
administration of Iron, that Mercury is needless for their treat
ment. But I must take the hæmatic action of the metal as
my stand -point for discoursing on its relation to one of the
principal blood diseases, syphilis.
I speak of syphilis as a blood disease. I assume the cor
rectness of the modern doctrine regarding it, in so far as it
refuses the name to the soft chancre with its suppurating
bubo, and allows it only to the indurated sore and its sequelæ .
I also range myself with those who follow Hahnemann in be
lieving the appearance of the induration to be evidence that the
system - that is, the blood - is already contaminated with the
venereal poison . I have discussed this question in an article
“ On Hahnemann's Doctrine of Syphilis ” in the twenty
seventh volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy,
and need not detain you with the evidence and arguments
here .
Syphilis, then, is a poisoning of the blood analogous to the
exanthemata - let us say, to inoculated smallpox. It has a
stage of incubation, which is yet (as Lancereaux has pointed
out) not without signs of impaired health. Slight feverishness,
lassitude, aching of the bones, and headache are often present ;
and careful observation finds chloro -anæmia to have already
set in . Hahnemann shows from earlier authors that of old
time this stage of incubation was more prolonged , and the
evidences (debility and fatigue, dulness of the sensorium ,
depression of spirits, earthy complexion with blue borders
round the eyes, &c.) of ill health during its existence more
536 MERCURIUS .

obvious. Then ensues the lesion which marks the point of

entrance of the virus. It is essentially an induration, what.
ever may be present on its superficial aspect ; and it is soon
followed by a similar condition of some of the inguinal glands,
doubtless the result of absorption . This is analogous to the
pustule of variolous inoculation ; and now, after a time, fol.
lows the specific fever of the disease, with its rash and sore
throat. The rash is macular or papular, less frequently
squamous. The sore-throat is ulcerative, generally indolently
so. Iritis, and sometimes laryngitis and periostitis, may occur
at this time. Lastly, we may have sequelæ of the syphilitic as of
other blood infections ; and these are in its case the infiltrations
of the viscera and the periosteum which are known as gummata
or nodes .
It is, I think, very helpful thus to regard primary, secondary,
and tertiary syphilis as stages of a chronic exanthema, differ
ing only in its prolonged course from the acute affections
which bear the same name. It is certain , again , that Mercury
has some influence over this malady, and that of a specific
kind . Few would maintain now -a - days that it antidotes
the venereal poison as an alkali neutralizes an acid ; and none,
I think, would suppose that it eliminates the materies morbi
by its ptyalism or other evacuation . We must look, there
fore, to its physiological effects to see what it is capable of
doing as a therapeutic agent, and how it does it.
Now it would be easy to make capital out of the admissions
of writers on the subject, and argue that Mercury does all it
can do in syphilis in virtue of its homeopathicity thereto.
“It is singular,” says Dr. Ringer, “ how similar the phe
nomena produced by Mercury are to those which result from
syphilis ;” and in so speaking he does but echo the expressions
of many who have gone before him.* But as our object is
** So also Stillé : “Alterative medicines act to a great degree in the
same direction as the diseases which they cure ; mercury, for example,
tends to produce lesions which bear a close resemblance to, if they ara
not identical with, these caused by syphilis.”
I.

MERCURIUS. 537

truth , and not the support of a theory, we must not be content

with these testimonies, but must examine for ourselves to see
if it is so .
I think that the result of such an enquiry must be that the
physiological effects of Mercury present only an imperfect
parallel to those of the syphilitic virus : that the two series of
phenomena correspond at certain points, but diverge widely at
others. Thus the syphilitic pyrexia, whether of the stage of
incubation or of that of eruption — the febrile chloro -anæmia ,
with its rheumatoid pains (aggravated by rest and the warmth
of bed ) in the head and face, behind the sternum , and around
the joints, and ending in falling of the hair - to all this Mercury
is strikingly homeopathic. But is it so to the resulting local
affections — to the primary indurated sore and buboes, to the
papulous or squamous syphilide ? I think not. Plastic
effusion into the cellular tissue is hardly the effect of a drug
which is so decidedly liquefacient. Such glands as are affected
by it swell from irritation approaching to inflammation, and
tend to suppurate ; while the eruption proper to hydrargyrosis
is vesicular or pustular. The sore-throat, however, and possibly
the iritis, laryngitis, and periostitis of this stage find in it a
true simile. But then we have the gummy infiltrations of
the tertiary period, and again Mercury fails to present, actually
or even probably, any analogous feature. So that, although
Mercury may affect every part which syphilis affects
though a mere " organopathy" would regard it as a simile
thereto, yet true homeopathy cannot allow that it acts
in all these parts after a like manner, and must hence (I
submit) refuse it the name. If Mercury can do anything
to resolve the primary indurations, the secondary dry
syphilides, and the tertiary infiltrations, it must do it by its
physiological action ; and we must not think that we are
homeopathizing in so using it. On the other hand, we are
strictly within the lines of our method when we treat with
small doses of the drug the specific febrile condition of incu
bation or before eruption, and the ulcers of mouth and
 538 MERCURIUS ,

throat and the subacute periostitis of the secondary period.

As regards the first named, it has been recently ascertained
that Mercury, when given in syphilis, increases the number of
the red globules of the blood . We have already seen that it
diminishes them in health ; and here also it is noted that,
if the drug be pushed too far, it reduces their number
again .
These seem the necessary deductions from the facts of the
case. Let us see how they agree with experience.
We have in the case of syphilis an excellent opportunity of
estimating the real effects of treatment; for we have abundant
material for the natural history of the disease. Expectant
treatment has been carried out on a large scale by the oppo
nents of the use of Mercury . The results may be read in the
excellent treatise of Dr. Charles Drysdale, On the treatment
of Syphilis and other diseases without Mercury. Syphilis,
say the non -mercurialists, when allowed to run its course
under hygienic measures and local applications, is rarely
other than a mild and indolent disease, wearing itself
out with little injury to the frame. In the words of one
of them — the late Mr. Syme— “ the case may be tedious,
and the skin , throat, or periosteum may be slightly affected ;
but none of the serious effects which used to be so much
dreaded ever appear, and even the trivial ones just
noticed comparatively seldom present themselves.” This
is perhaps too broad a statement, and more exceptions
should have been allowed ; but it goes little beyond the
conclusions arrived at after the non -mercurial treatment
of thousands of cases in the great military hospitals of
France.
Can Mercury do better ? In endeavouring to answer this
question we are much hindered by the confusion which has
existed till within the last few years between the soft chancre
and the indurated sore . Since Mercury is perfectly home
opathic to the former, as we have seen , it may well promote
its healing if given in moderate doses. And since this
 MERCURIUS . 539

chancre is far more frequent than the other, and is never fol
lowed by constitutional symptoms, it may easily be supposed
by one who lumps all his cases together that the Mercury he
gives prevents the occurrence of secondaries. This is the
statement of Hahnemann * , and of two of his followers,
Schneidert and Jähri - all these speaking from prolonged or
extensive experience. On the other hand, Dr. Yeldham in his
excellent Homeopathy in Venereal Diseases, and Bähr in his
System of Therapeutics, discriminating more scientifically,
admit that the indurated chancre is generally followed by
secondary symptoms, whatever be the treatment adopted for
it. The latter allows nine to fifteen weeks for the continu
ance of the chancre, which is about the same time it occupies
when left to nature . Dr. Yeldham , whose doses approach
more nearly to those of the old school, considers that he
really shortens the duration of both primary and secondary
symptoms. If it be so , it may be that a slight physiological
action is produced, though not enough to affect the mouth .
But I venture to think that a careful reckoning of his dates
will show that his indurated chancres and dry syphilides
lasted nearly if not quite as long as those of expectant
treatment, as the same is related by Dr. Charles Drysdale.
The most marked effects were healing of ulcers and improve
ment in general health, both of which belong to the truly
homeopathic action of the drug.
The conclusion seems to be that it is only at certain points
and stages of the syphilitic process that Mercury can an
tidote it after a specific manner, that is (again to quote our
own Drysdale's definition) by the absorption of its whole
physiological into its therapeutical action . But these points
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 396 .
+ Ibid ., xxii, 620 .
1 On Venereal Diseases.
|| He gives from one to three grains of the first, or from five to ten
grains of the second decimal attenuation of Mercurius solubilis ( i.e., from
is to so of a grain ) three times a day.
540 MERCURIUS .

and stages are important enough. The primary and secondary

blood disorder ; the affections of mouth and throat; the sub
acute inflammation of the periosteum ; and perhaps the iritis
and laryngitis, are to be included among them . Again, the
whole series of manifestations of hereditary syphilis are
within its range, whether they take the form of bullæ , ab
scesses , and marasmus, or the slower and less fatal variety
which consists in snuffles, stomatitis, readily moistening
syphilides, pale earthy colour of skin , iritis, and epiphyseal
periostitis in the long bones. And further uses are suggested
by the results of its abuse. When the local manifestations
of the disease become destructive ; when the eruptions take
the form of impetigo or rupia, when rapid ulceration affects
the mucous membranes, or when caries invades the bones :
here, when the cause is not Mercury itself, its administration
is most effective. Thus Dr. Gerson speaks highly of corrosive
sublimate in the phagedænic or sloughing chancre ; and Dr.
Yeldham has known Mercurius solubilis arrest phagedænic
ulceration when other remedies, ordinarily recommended for
that condition , had failed. Dr. George Wood, moreover,
writes of the syphilitic cachexia : “ I have seen the lowest
condition of shattered health, which for years had resisted
various treatment under the idea that it was mercurial disease,
get well under a careful administration of blue-pill, as if
cured by a charm .”
We claim all such cures, I say, for the homeopathic action
of Mercury. Whether we should ever go beyond it, and use
the drug for syphilitic manifestations where some measure of
physiological action must be set up, is a question. It seems
quite unnecessary to do so for the primary sore and the
secondary syphilides, as they only want time for their dis
appearance ; and to disperse the tertiary gummata when
they are causing mischief, we can nearly always depend upon
the Iodide of Potassium . The only disease in which the prac
tice has sometimes seemed needful, even in our hands, is
syphilitic iritis. Mercury is pretty certainly homeopathic to
 MERCURIUS . 541

this inflammation, and can cure its rheumatic form readily

enough in small doses. But when syphilis is its cause, it
every now and then happens that nothing will affect the
disease until Mercury is given to touch the mouth. You
remember the vivid description of Watson : “ The instant
that the patient's gums and breath acknowledge the specific
influence of Mercury upon his system, a welcome change be
comes apparent : the red zone surrounding the cornea begins
to fade ; the drops of lymph to lessen ; the iris to resume
its proper tint; and the puckered and irregular pupil once
more to approach to the perfect circle ; till at length the
eye is restored to its original integrity, and beauty, and use
fulness.” The eye is so precious an organ that one would
willingly submit to a temporary sacrifice of general health ,
if really necessary for its restoration . Should you ever
have to push Mercury to this extent, let me remind you
of the method of Law, who divided a grain of calomel
into twelve parts, giving one every hour till the mouth
was touched, which it usually was ere thirty -six doses
had been taken .. Trousseau and Pidoux have carried his
plan farther, making twenty -four doses of the grain, and
giving one every two hours only. In this way, they say,
they rarely require as much as three grains to effect their
purpose.
I have said all this from the homeopathic stand-point. In
the old school men seem passing from the entire renunciation
of Mercury in syphilis to a renewed recognition of its power
over the disease. The recent deliverances of Mr. Hutchinson
are very significant on this point. His recommendations to
avoid physiological action are cautious enough ; but when he
speaks of it being “ desirable to introduce a considerable
quantity of the drug into the system, and to protract its use
over a very long time,” we seem to be beginning the old
career again . To all disposed to enter upon it, I would re
commend the perusal of the work of Andrew Mathias, a sur
geon to the Queen in 1816, On the Mercurial Disease. He
542 MERCURIUS.

argues, quite in Hahnemannian fashion, that Mercury cures

syphilis by setting up a specific disease of its own which is
incompatible with it. And he shows from numerous observa
tions (as Hahnemann had done before) that if the drug be
given too largely or too long the venereal symptoms will cease
to improve, will take on a retrograde action, and will be com
plicated with fresh lesions of a similar but distinctive cha
racter . It is interesting to observe that, according to him ,
when this mercurial disease has subsided, the old venereal
symptoms will reappear, having been suspended only by the
presence of the other. Hahnemann makes such suspension,
instead of extinction, the mark of a different as opposed to a
similar disease , and so our position is confirmed , that while
Mercury is homeopathic to syphilis at points, it is not so as
whole to whole .
I need not excuse myself for having dwelt so long
relation of Mercury to syphilis, as in all respects the subject
is of eminent importance. But I must now pass on to other
phases of the therapeutical action of the drug.
II. I have shown how the very forms of venereal disease
which are ordinarily supposed to contra -indicate Mercury to
us suggest its choice. Such affections are especially met with
in the scrofulous ; and it is an accepted canon in old school
therapeutics that where this diathesis exists Mercury is
strictly forbidden . We on the contrary , and for the converse
of the same reason , use it largely in many manifestations of
scrofula . It is useful when the morbid phenomena show
themselves in the eye, the ear, the glands, and the bones; also
in weeping eruptions and ulcerations of the surface. In
strumous ophthalmia especially you will find it (best in the
form of the red oxide or the corrosive sublimate ) an excellent
medicine. There are some good cases of it treated with the
latter preparation by Dr. Böcker in the third , and by Dr. Kidd
in the twenty -second volume of the British Journal of Homar
pathy. But for the whole subject of the relation of Mercury
to scrofula I would refer you to Dr. H. Goullon's treatise on
 MERCURIUS. 543

the disease, here as always the best source of information as to

its therapeutics.
III. Another constitutional affection in whose treatment
Mercury plays a part is rheumatism . The occurrence of pro
fuse and odorous perspirations, which give no relief, has in
all affections been regarded as a “ key -note " for Mercury ;
and it is a well-known and almost pathognomonic symptom
of rheumatism . It is in subacute forms of the disease ,
readily relapsing, where the pains do not shift about.
much, and are markedly worse at night — the patient
being very sensitive to cold—that Mercury is so useful.
Some excellent cases illustrative of its virtues are recorded
by Dr. Yeldham in the third and fourth volumes of the
Annals .
IV. Again , the description I have given , from Alley, of the
febrile eruptions induced by Mercury forcibly suggests the
three great eruptive fevers, measles, scarlatina, and smallpox.
His severer degrees of “ hydrargyria " very fairly correspond to
these in their ascending scale. Mercury suits well the ex
anthem and the catarrhal symptoms of ordinary measles, and
may, with Aconite for its fever, do all that is required in its
treatment. In scarlatina its place is in the anginose form of
the disease ; where its swelling, ulceration, and tendency to
gangrene make it exquisitely homeopathic, and where it is
thoroughly efficacious. In variola it takes up the treatment
where Tartar emetic has — if it has — to leave it, namely, where
in spite of the former remedy the pocks are going on to sup
puration , and the secondary fever is setting in . It is here .
highly praised by all homeopathic writers .
V. I will now pass rapidly over the tissues and organs in
fluenced by Mercury, pointing out how far its physiological
effects have found their application to practice. But as
most of these effects are of an inflammatory nature, let me
say a few words on the general relation of Mercury to in
flammations .
These, with syphilis and hepatic disorder, formed of old
544 MERCURIUS ,

the tripod on which the fame of Mercury rested. And here

also we might convict our antagonists, out of their own
mouths, of homeopathising in what they were doing. In
the words of Sir Thomas Watson : “ When Mercury is gra
dually introduced into the human body in small quantities,
it produces sooner or later very remarkable effects. It causes
inflammation. Perhaps it may be for that reason that the
professors of homeopathy prescribe mercurius ' so often ."
It is , indeed. But here also we must discriminate, though
it be to our own disadvantage. The seat and kind of the
phlogosis induced by Mercury is not generally that for which
it has been so renowned as a remedy. It is in adhesive in
flammations of serous membranes, in membranous croup and
exudative iritis, that it has been given : it is its physiolo
gical effect that has been desired, and this has been in
duced accordingly. It has been regarded as contra -indicated
in mucous and parenchymatous inflammations, and where
the tendency has been to ulceration and suppuration. These
contras, however, are our pros. The great use of Mercury
in the homeopathic treatment of all inflammations is to
check suppuration when impending, and heal ulceration
when extending.
1. In affections of the mouth Mercury naturally holds a
high place. It is not homeopathic to the true membranous
stomatitis — the muguet of the French ; but it is so to thrush ,
which always tends to ulceration. It is rarely necessary,
however, to give anything but Borax in this disease, when the
morbid process is limited to the mouth. For simple ulcera:
tion, as well as syphilitic, of the mucous membrane of the
buccal cavity Mercury is specific, especially when followed up
by Nitric acid. Cancrum oris is another idiopathic disease of
this part which closely resembles the pathogenetic effects of
Mercury. We of course treat it with this drug ; but it is
rather amusing to find a writer of the old school advocating
the practice. Hempel cites such an one in the person of Dr.
Duncan, of Dublin .
 MERCURIUS . 545

With the mouth we class the salivary glands, the tongue,

and the teeth.
a. Mercury has cured idiopathic salivation , as from preg
nancy . Drs. Marcy and Hunt recommend in this affection a
wash for the mouth made of two grains of the second tritu
ration of Mercurius corrosivus in a pint of water. In in
flammations of the salivary glands Mercury must always be
the leading remedy. I may specify two - mumps, in which
we always give it, though whether it affects the natural course
of the disease I cannot say ; and the tenderness and swelling,
threatening suppuration, left behind after scarlatina, or ap
pearing during typhus, in which the Iodides of Mercury act
most efficiently .
6. In subacute inflammations of the lingual mucous mem
brane, and even in acute glossitis, Mercury has acted very well.
Dr. Guernsey points out a very heavy, thick, yellow, moist
covering of the tongue as indicating the drug, saying that it
should rarely be given when the tongue is dry . Dr. Quin
notes sweet taste in the mouth as a characteristic symp
tom for it.
c. In our present uncertainty as to the action of Mercury on
the teeth it would be premature to fix its curative place in
their diseases. If it is true that its abuse can cause them to
become carious, the medicine ought to be valuable in check
ing this process . More certainly it is of value in periostitis of
the sockets, a frequent cause of toothache : its steady use
here will often supersede extraction . The feeling as if the teeth
were elongated is a special indication for it.
2. I have now to speak of Mercury in affections of the
throat. Simple catarrhal angina is a malady in which I think
this medicine far too frequently used. It is recommended
in Domestic Guides to homeopathic treatment whenever
there is any tendency to ulceration ; and every mucous exuda
tion on the tonsils is taken for an ulcer, and treated accord .
ingly. But these phenomena, even if truly ulcerative, are
but superficial accidents of an acute gore -throat, where there
516 MERCURIUS .

is much pain and bright redness. Cut away this inflamed

base with your Belladonna and (if needful) Aconite ; the ulcer
will not remain behind. In my own experience, the angina
calling for Mercury has been of rare occurrence . It is of a
subacute or torpid character, with pale or bluish -red swell
ing ; and ulceration is often present. Its power of cheeking
suppuration makes it often useful in quinsy. Hahnemann
praises it here; and Dr. Ringer writes : “When in quinsy
or scarlatina the tonsils are so enlarged as almost to meet, and
when the difficulty in swallowing is nearly insuperable, and it
may be there is even danger of suffocation, if at such a time
a third of a grain of grey powder be taken every hour, in a
few hours the swelling is much reduced, and the danger,
discomfort, and distress much removed . The effect of the
mercury in such cases is often most signal.” Dr. Imbert
Gourbeyre, also , bas defined the place and illustrated the
virtue of Mercury in quinsy in a memoir on the treatment
of angina by mercurials, Belladonna, and Aconite, translated
from the Moniteur des Hôpitaux in the fourteenth volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy.
When anything like the cynanche maligna or putrid sore
throat of the old writers is present, Mercurius is an indis
pensable remedy. On the other hand, those same character.
istics of its action which make it so suitable for the sore -throat
of scarlatina unfit it for that of diphtheria . There is so much
phenomenal resemblance between the effects of Mercury and
the symptoms of diphtheria, that the preparations of this
drug - especially the iodides -- have been extensively used in
its treatment. I have watched their action over and over
again , without being able to satisfy myself of their exerting
the least control over the morbid process. Nor can we expect
them to do so. For in diphtheria there is neither ulceration
nor gangrene, but a false membrane formed upon an unbroken
surface. Until it has been proved that Mercury can cause
this pathological formation , there is no evidence that it is
truly bomeopathic to the diphtheritic process.
 MERCURIUS . 547

Mercury may occasionally be useful in chronic ulcers of the

throat, simple or syphilitic ; and would probably cure such a
chronic angina as that described by Dietrich , were we to meet it
as an idiopathic affection . In one of the provers of Cinnabar
such a sore-throat was greatly ameliorated by the doses
taken .
3. I should not have said that Mercury had any place in
the treatment of dyspepsia but for some recent remarks by
Dr. Pemberton Dudley. He esteems the perchloride, in the
second and third decimal triturations, very highly in chronic
gastric catarrh, with distension and soreness of the epigas
trium and of the transverse colon . The only other gastric
affection in which I can indicate it is the sudden vomit
ing of milk in infants, which so often depends on degenerative
change of the mucous membrane of the stomach . Here Dr.
Ringer highly commends minute doses of grey powder or
calomel. Nor can I say anything about it in affections of the
small intestine, save that the late Dr. Petroz has published
some cases tending to prove that the black sulphide (Ethiops
mineral) has considerable control over the enteric lesion of ty
phoid fever , * and that Dr. von Tunzelmann has lately written
in corroboration.f But when the large intestines are affected,
whether with simple inflammation, with chronic ulceration, or
with dysentery, the effects of corrosive sublimate are amongst
the most brilliant things in specific medicine. Hahnemann
was the first to recommend it in dysentery ; and at a recent
meeting of the British Homeopathic Society the testimony
in its favour from all sides, both from high and from low
dilutionists, was most satisfactory.
As to the glands which wait upon the alimentary canal,
we know too little of pancreatic disease to be able to indicate
the curative sphere of Mercury therein . But the experience
of the homeopathic school entirely confirms the British
estimate of the value of the drug in disorders of the liver.
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 634.
+ Monthly Homeopathic Review, xviii, 77.
5.46 MERCURIUS .

is much pain and bright redness. Cut away this inflamed

base with your Belladonna and (if needful) Aconite ; the ulcer
will not remain behind . In my own experience, the angina
calling for Mercury has been of rare occurrence . It is of a
subacute or torpid character, with pale or bluish -red swell.
ing ; and ulceration is often present. Its power of cheeking
suppuration makes it often useful in quinsy. Hahnemann
praises it here ; and Dr. Ringer writes : “ When in quinsy
or scarlatina the tonsils are so enlarged as almost to meet, and
when the difficulty in swallowing is nearly insuperable, and it
may be there is even danger of suffocation , if at such a time
a third of a grain of grey powder be taken every hour, in a
few hours the swelling is much reduced, and the danger,
discomfort, and distress much removed . The effect of the
mercury in such cases is often most signal. ” Dr. Imbert
Gourbeyre, also , bas defined the place and illustrated the
virtue of Mercury in quinsy in a memoir on the treatment
of angina by mercurials, Belladonna, and Aconite, translated
from the Moniteur des Hôpitaux in the fourteenth volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy.
When anything like the cynanche maligna or putrid sore
throat of the old writers is present, Mercurius is an indis
pensable remedy. On the other hand , those same character
istics of its action which make it so suitable for the sorethroat
of scarlatina unfit it for that of diphtheria. There is so much
phenomenal resemblance between the effects of Mercury and
the symptoms of diphtheria , that the preparations of this
drug — especially the iodides - have been extensively used in
its treatment. I have watched their action over and over
again, without being able to satisfy myself of their exerting
the least control over the morbid process. Nor can we expect
them to do so. For in diphtheria there is neither ulceration
nor gangrene, but aa false membrane formed upon an unbroken
surface. Until it has been proved that Mercury can cause
this pathological formation , there is no evidence that it is
truly homeopathic to the diphtheritic process.
 MERCURIUS . 547
Mercury may occasionally be useful in chronic ulcers of the
throat, simple or syphilitic ; and would probably cure such a
chronic angina as that described by Dietrich, were we to meet it
as an idiopathic affection. In one of the provers of Cinnabar
such a sore-throat was greatly ameliorated by the doses
taken .
3. I should not have said that Mercury had any place in
the treatment of dyspepsia but for some recent remarks by
Dr. Pemberton Dudley. He esteems the perchloride, in the
second and third decimal triturations, very highly in chronic
gastric catarrh, with distension and soreness of the epigas
trium and of the transverse colon. The only other gastric
affection in which I can indicate it is the sudden vomit
ing of milk in infants, which so often depends on degenerative
change of the mucous membrane of the stomach . Here Dr.
Ringer highly commends minute doses of grey powder or
calomel. Nor can I say anything about it in affections of the
small intestine, save that the late Dr. Petroz has published
some cases tending to prove that the black sulphide ( Ethiops
mineral) has considerable control over the enteric lesion of ty
phoid fever,* and that Dr. von Tunzelmann has lately written
in corroboration.t But when the large intestines are affected,
whether with simple inflammation , with chronic ulceration, or
with dysentery, the effects of corrosive sublimate are amongst
the most brilliant things in specific medicine. Hahnemann
was the first to recommend it in dysentery ; and at a recent
meeting of the British Homeopathic Society the testimony
in its favour from all sides, both from high and from low
dilutionists, was most satisfactory.
As to the glands which wait upon the alimentary canal,
we know too little of pancreatic disease to be able to indicate
the curative sphere of Mercury therein . But the experience
of the homeopathic school entirely confirms the British
estimate of the value of the drug in disorders of the liver.
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 634.
+ Monthly Homæopathic Review , xviii, 77.
548 MERCURIUS .

I say, the British estimate ; for in French and German

treatises this medication is always spoken of as foreign to
their practice. I have already shown that experimentation ,
while opposing the notion that Mercury directly stimulates
the secreting function of the liver, shows it to cause conges.
tion of the organ and jaundice. In both these hepatic affec
tions the medicine ranks facile princeps among homeopathic
practitioners ; and it acts well in quite minute doses, as the
third , sixth , and twelfth attenuations. It is an admirable
remedy for what is called a "torpid ” liver, where deficient
secretion of bile is indicated by pale, costive, and offensive
motions, loss of appetite, and depression of spirits. That
there is congestion present in these cases seems indicated by
the dull pain in the right hypochondrium , of which the
patients usually complain. So in simple jaundice, as it occurs
in children (where probably the same congestion is present),
Mercury will generally do all that is required. For acute
parenchymatous inflammation of the liver, Dr. Gerson speaks
of calomel in our doses as highly as do the Indian practitioners
of the old school .
Dr. Ringer has some excellent remarks on this subject,
which might have been written by any homeopathist. Ad
mitting the full force of the experiments which have been
made, he yet argues that they must not set aside the experience
6
of generations ; and that “ it is not difficult to conceive that
Mercury in disease may set aside some condition hindering the
formation of bile, and thus act as a cholagogue, while yet in
health it may even check this secretion .” He advises minute
doses ---from the sixth to the half of a grain of grey powder
twice or three times a day ; and says that were those who
decry mercurial preparations to use the drug in this way, they
would obtain the desired effect without the bad results they
fear.
Putting now together the influence of Mercury on the intes
tinal mucous membrane and on the hepatic secretion, we see
that it should be beneficial in many forms of diarrhea ; and
 MERCURIUS . 549

so it is . Few medicines are more frequently called for in the

diarrhea of infants and young children, when the evacuations
are vitiated , of various colours, slimy and offensive, sometimes
excoriating the anus. Calomel (the “ Mercurius dulcis ” of
our nomenclature) is the best form in which to use it here; as
this preparation of the drug most readily causes bowel affec
tions in the healthy. Mercurius corrosivus is called for when
the disorder in children is of a more inflammatory type ; and
generally whenever diarrhea assumes a dysenteric form .
Here again Dr. Ringer has contributed most practical de
scriptions of the use of the medicine. In children, where “ three
or four pale, clayey, pasty, stinking motions are passed in the
course of the day,” frequent doses of a third of a grain of
grey powder will soon set matters right. In their dysenteric
diarrhæa, where the motions are “ slimy,” and often mixed
with blood , the eightieth of a grain of corrosive sublimate will
cure “ with remarkable speed and certainty.” “The great in
dication for the bichloride,” he writes, “ is the slimy character
of the motions.” Here he is curiously at one with Dr.
Guernsey, who says, “Merc. is rarely indicated in diarrhea
when there is no slime.” A sixth of a grain of grey powder
given hourly will soon check cholera infantum and chronic
diarrhoea with green stools in the same subjects. He also
commends the perchloride, in doses of the hundredth of a
grain, in the dysentery and chronic diarrhæa of adults. His
whole section on this subject may be commended to your
study, and affords a most gratifying instance of the progress
made by our ideas. If such teachings prevail, Mercury will
soon be found a blessing where so long it has been a curse.
4. The mercurial preparations occupy a less important place
as remedies for affections of the respiratory mucous membrane.
Mercurius solubilis has aa high domestic reputation as a remedy
for “ running colds ;" but I confess that I myself prefer
Euphrasia. I can confirm , however, Dr. Bayes' statement
that “ catarrhal cough, with yellow muco -purulent expectora -
tion, often yields very readily " to it in the sixth dilution .
36
 550 MERCURIUS.

Perhaps we in this country undervalue Mercury in bronchitis,

for our German brethren seem to estimate it very highly,
judging from the testimony of Trinks, Bähr, and Hirschel.
Here is what the latter writes about it. “ How the allopaths,
and much more their patients, are to be pitied , that their
school should lack a knowledge of Mercurius as a cough
remedy ! Where is there a more certain , a more specifically
acting remedy for the appropriate kinds of cough of aa catar
rhal, inflammatory, organic nature, running down from the
fauces through the trachea and into the finest bronchi, de
cisive in acute affections, ameliorating in the chronic, slime
loosening, resolvent, restorative, where there are roughness,
burning, feeling of soreness from the fauces down to the
sternum , hoarseness of voice, dry cough, raw , concussive, ex
haustive ; sputum ropy, watery , spittle-like, nasty, bloody;
catarrhal headache, coryza , diarrhea, fever, non -ameliorating
night-sweats - here is the province of Mercurius. It is the
sovereign remedy of inflammatory bronchial catarrh."
5. Coming now to the uro - genital organs, we have in Mer,
curius corrosivus another truly homeopathic remedy for
nephritis and albuminuria. Clinical experience has not yet
enlightened us as to its place in the treatment of these diseases
as distinguished from that of Cantharis, of Terebinthina, and
of Arsenic. I have already pointed out the homeopathicity
of Mercury to the soft chancre, as to any non- syphilitic ulcer
forming on the genitals. I will only add that Dr. Yeldham
recommends Mercurius solubilis as the best medicine in bala
nitis ; and Mercurius corrosivus, in alternation with Aconite,
in the first stage of gonorrhea. Bähr treats this disease
with Mercury almost throughout, but his results are not
striking.
6. The traditional use of Mercury in inflammations of the
serous membranes has (as I have said) no relation to its
specific influence upon them , and is upon our principles quite
inadmissible. We hold it of very questionable advantage to
prevent lymphous exudation by a poison which causes a lower
 MERCURIUS . 551

form of effusion to take its place. But in one of these inflam

mations - peritonitis - Mercurius corrosivus has high curative
power of a specific nature. I have used it here even more
frequently than Bryonia , and with most gratifying results.
7. As to cutaneous diseases, I have already spoken of those
of syphilitic nature. You will always bear in mind excessive
perspiration, especially when of aa viscid consistence and strong
odour, as an indication for the drug . When this symptom
>

is itself the disease, as in hidrosis pedum, Hartmann speaks

of Mercurius solubilis as not unfrequently curative. The only
non -specific skin affection in which I have any experience of
the drug is the eczema impetiginodes of unhealthy, often
scrofulous children. Here Mercurius corrosivus acts most
satisfactorily.
8. The same preparation of Mercury is very useful in
ulceration of the cartilages of the joints. You may read an
instance of its action recorded by Dr. Lawrence Newton in the
fourteenth volume ofthe Monthly Homoeopathic Review (p.543) .
The ordinary forms of the metal are much praised in scrofulous
and rheumatic periostitis, and in such caries of the bones as
occurs in the former disease, and after smallpox.
III. I can say nothing of the application to practice of
the neurotic powers of Mercury. It would seem indicated in
paralysis agitans and in some forms of chorea, especially
when these are accompanied by mental disorder of the fatuous
type.
Time would fail me to speak farther of the therapeutic
virtues of Mercury, as homeopathy has developed them. Many
affections of the eyes and ears--as ophthalmia neonatorum
and gonorrhoica, rheumatic ophthalmia , some forms of amau .
rosis, otitis, and scrofulous otorrhoa ; many other suppurative
inflammations beside those I have mentioned, as mastitis and
strumous adenitis ; many congestions and febrile conditions
come within its influence. For these I must refer you to the
authorities I have named, especially to Hartmann ; and I
would add to them Dr. Hempel, whose article on Mercury is
552 MERCURIUS .

very complete and satisfactory. I can only say a few words,

in conclusion , on allied medicines and dose.
Mercury forms the central figure of that remarkable triad,
Arsenic, Mercury, and Iodine. Its milder preparations approach
most nearly to Iodine, while the corrosive sublimate is the
closest of the analogues to Arsenic. These are the only
remedies generally allied to Mercury : those resembling it in
their action upon special tissues and organs we have mentioned
in their respective places .
The range of the dose of Mercury is necessarily extensive.
In syphilitic affections most of us, even those who are other
wise addicted to high dilutions—as Jahr and Hartmann - give
the low triturations ; none however going so far as even to
touch the gums. In most of the other disorders calling for
Mercurius vivus or solubilis the third or sixth decimal tritura.
tion will be found suitable ; and Hartmann recommends us,
even when we go higher, to make our potencies by trituration
rather than solution. Of Mercurius corrosivus I generally
give the third centesimal in acute, the third decimal in chronic
inflammation. The range of dose within which this remedy
acts may be estimated from the fact that Hahnemann praises
it highly in acute dysentery, giving one dose only of the
fifteenth or thirtieth potency ; while Dr. Ringer commends it
no less in hourly portions of the hundredth of a grain.
 LECTURE XXXI .

MEZEREUM , MILLEFOLIUM , MOSCHUS, MUREX, NATRUM CAR

BONICUM, MURIATICUM, AND SULPHURICUM , NUPHAR ,
NUX MOSCHATA .

ANOTHER longish list of minor medicines comes before us

to-day. We will begin with the spurge-olive, Daphne
Mezereum .
We make a tincture of the recent, or triturations of the
dried bark .
A proving of Mezereum appeared in the Fragmenta de
viribus, containing 62 symptoms from Hahnemann, and 34
from authors. The drug did not reappear among his medi
cines till the second edition of the Chronic Diseases was pub
lished, where it has a pathogenesis of 610 symptoms, the
additions being from ten others. As the names of some of
these belong to Hahnemann's earlier disciples and associates,
it is probable that the provings of Mezereum mostly belong
to the time of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, and have not the
questionable character of those of the latter collection .
Mezereum was one of the vegetable substances -- as guaiacum
and sarsaparilla — with which it was attempted to replace Mer
cury in the treatment of syphilis. It still holds a place in
the compound decoction of sarsaparilla of the British Phar
macopoeia, but is quite neglected as a specific agent. Ringer
and Wood barely allude to it, and Dr. Phillips (who might
have done better) merely summarises Pereira's article on the
drug. Yet one of its antisyphilitic applications has stood
the test of later practice, and is vouched for by such practi
 554 MEZEREUM ,

tioners as Hufeland and Alexander Russell . I refer to its

influence over nodes and nocturnal bone pains, dolores osteocopi,
as they used to be called. Hahnemann's pathogenesis in the
Fragmenta mentions such pains as caused by it in the cranium,
clavicle, and thighs ; and in homeopathic practice we use it
with much confidence in these affections, and in simple or
rheumatic periostitis. Whether it acts upon the bones them .
selves, I hesitate to say. There is, however, a case on
record in which it seemed to check the necrosis of the jaw
produced by phosphorus ; and Noack and Trinks mention
several osseous diseases as benefited by it.
But the homeopathic method has added another valuable
application of Mezereum, namely, to cutaneous affections.
The plant is a violent acrid, and irritates the skin when ap
plied externally, as it does the throat, stomach, and intestines
when swallowed. The former, however, unlike the latter, is
a specific action ; and is manifested when the drug is other.
wise introduced into the circulation. Hahnemann relates *
the case of a man who took Mezereum for a long time for the
cure of some complaints that he had , and became at length
affected with an intolerable itching over the whole body,
which did not allow him an hour's sleep. This was removed
in twenty - four hours by camphor. Bergius also, cited by him ,
has observed an itching vesicular eruption over the whole
body caused by the internal use of the drug ; and several of
the provers had similar symptoms. Mezereum is recom
mended by Hahnemann , and by Noack and Trinks, for seve
ral forms of cutaneous eruption ; but Rückert gives no in
stance of its use. Dr. Robert Cooper, however, has commu
nicated to the thirteenth volume of the Monthly Homoeopathic
Review a chronic case of pityriasis capitis, with loss of hair
and great itching, in which Mezereum in the third decimal
dilution effected a very satisfactory cure . Bähr, moreover,
considers Mezereum about the best medicine for shingles; and
not only for the eruption, but also for the consecutive neural
* Lesser Writings, p. 381 .
 MILLEFULIUM . 555

gia. I have tried it in one case, occurring in an old man, with

the best results.
Besides the skin, Mezereum specifically irritates the genito
urinary organs. “ The urinary organs, ” says Pereira, “ are
sometimes affected by it, an irritation similar to that of Can
tharides being set up ; ” and Hahnemann found it produce
blennorrhoea of the urethra and vulva . He mentions leucor
rhea of some years' standing as having been cured by it ; and
in Dr. Cooper's case “terrible irritation of the vagina” was
present, and disappeared under the use of the remedy. There
is also a case narrated by Hempel of poisoning by the external
application of Mezereum , in which symptoms of cerebral
depression supervened like those we have seen produced by
Anacardium . I may add that it is recommended in proso
palgia affecting the left supra -orbital nerve.
Altogether, Mezereum is an active and promising medicine ;
and from what we have seen as to the nature of its provings
may be used in accordance with them with all confidence.
Its analogous are Anacardium , Guaiacum , Phytolacca, and
Rhus.
The lower potencies have chiefly been used.
I have next to speak of the common yarrow, Achillea
Millefolium .
The tincture is prepared from the entire plant.
Dr. Hering has given us for Millefolium one of his exhaus
tive collections of observations. It was first published in his
Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen ; and has been translated, with
additions, in the ninth volume of the New England Medical
Gazette. It contains symptoms from six provers of the plant.
The yarrow has long been in popular repute as a vulnerary
and hæmostatic. Its virtues of the latter kind have been
sedulously cultivated by homeopathists. Hahnemann wrote
of it in 1796 : “ We should endeavour to find out if the
Millefoil cannot itself produce hæmorrhage in large doses, as
556 MOSCHUS .

it is so efficacious in moderate doses in chronic hæmorrhages."

I cannot discover that it has ever done so when internally
administered, but it is noted by the older writers that if a leaf
of it is put into the nose it causes blood to flow . However,
it is a very good medicine for hæmorrhages in our small
doses, which makes it probable that its action is of the home.
opathic kind. I have myself seen it act well in hæmoptysis
and recurring epistaxis ; and Dr. Hering cites several instances
of its successful use, among others one of hæmaturia .
This is the only application of Millefolium with which I am
acquainted ; but you may possibly discover others from a study
of Dr. Hering's collection, which contains recommendations
of it (from domestic and allopathic sources) in numerous
forms of disease. It may be useful in “ phthisis florida .”
Hamamelis and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies. The
hæmorrhage of Millefolium is not so passive and venous as
that of the former, and less connected with expulsive action
cough, vomiting, & c.-- than that of the latter.
I use the first decimal dilution . In the case of hæmaturia
mentioned , quarter -drop doses of the mother- tincture were
employed. I have seen drop doses of it seriously aggravate
an hæmoptysis, which supports the homeopathicity of the
action .

We come now to that curious animal secretion, musk

Moschus,
of which we make a tincture or triturations.
There is a pathogenesis of Moschus in the first volume of
the Materia Medica Pura. It contains 2 symptoms only from
Hahnemann , 111 from three fellow -observers, and 39 from
authors. The provings seems to have been made with the
pure substance or mother -tincture, and we have others from
Professor Jörg on himself, six pupils, and two females ; so that
our knowledge of the physiological action of Musk is consider
able . Dr. Langheinz, in an article which you will find
 MUREX PURPUREA . 557

translated from the Vierteljahrschrift in the twenty -second

volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy, has shown that
the symptoms cited by Hahnemann from authors are mostly
of doubtful validity. You may read Jörg's experiments in
his pages.
Musk has long been known as a pretty powerful nervine
stimulant. In this way it affected the provers, exciting the
circulation and sexual organs, and causing headache with
fulness and drowsiness. In this way also it is used in medi
cine. I know of no distinctive homeopathic applications of
it, though we utilize the virtues it has more largely than do our
brethren of the old school. I always carry it in my pocket
case, on account of its great value in two conditions demanding
speedy relief. These are the hysterical paroxysm and nervous
palpitation . I know nothing which so rapidly dissipates an
hysterical attack , even when it has gone as far as unconscious
ness, as Moschus. It is of no less potency in palpitation
which has been set off by some nervous excitement, when
there is no organic disease of the heart. Moschus is also
occasionally useful in laryngismus stridulus affecting nervous
children ; and should be remembered in hysterical asthma,
and in biccough. Dr. Guernsey considers it indicated in such
conditions by the presence of great coldness.
Moschus is allied with Ambra , Asafoetida , Castoreum , and
Valerian ; also with Camphor and Nux moschata .
I use the second and third decimal dilutions of the tincture.
I believe that the odour of this medicine is of importance to
its action, and that pilules and globules of it are useless.
I must now say a few words about the drug we call
Murex purpurea ,
which is the colouring matter of the shell -fish so named . It
is triturated for our use, being insoluble in water, alcohol , and
ether. The British Homeopathic Pharmacopæia directs the
whole mollusc to be used ; but this is surely needless .
Dr. Petroz proved Murex, in the fourth trituration, on three
558 NATRUM CARBONICUM .

women .
His results were published in the third volume of
the Révue de la Matière Médicale spécifique ; and are translated,
with some additional matter, in the fourth volume of the
American Homeopathic Review.
Murex evidently acts specifically upon the uterus, rendering
the provers painfully conscious of possessing such an organ.
It produces also in them the well-known sympathetic sym
ptoms of sinking in the stomach and pains in the breasts : the
sexual appetite moreover is greatly excited . It has proved
curative in several cases of uterine congestion ; and from one
of these Dr. Petroz thinks it likely to be useful in " the
inflammatory and fungous engorgements of the neck of the
womb, whose degeneration, so rapid and so dangerous, often
produces accidents and irreparable disorders."
One of the symptoms induced by Murex was “ frequent
need to urinate during the night ; urine colourless. ” Acting
on this hint Dr. Murray Moore gave it * in a case of polyuria,
where the secretion was of this character, with rapidly curative
results.
Murex evidently corresponds both as a medicine and as a
natural product with Sepia .
The dilutions from the fourth to the sixth were used in the
cases cured.

I have now to speak of the salts of Sodium we use in

homeopathic practice — the carbonate, the chloride, and the
sulphate. It is the old name for Sodium - Natron or Natrum
-which gives it this place in our alphabetical series.
The carbonate of soda,

Natrum carbonicum ,
is triturated or dissolved in water for our use.
In the first edition of the Chronic Diseases Hahnemann pub
lished a pathogenesis of Natrum carbonicum , containing 308
symptoms, which from his preface we may infer to have been
* Monthly Hom . Review , xii, 305.
 NATRUM MURIATICUM . 559

observed in patients taking the third trituration . The salt

was then proved by Nenning and Schreter, and their results
-making 625 in all - appeared in the third volume of the
Arzneimittellehre of Hartlaub and Trinks. No information is
given as to how they were obtained. In the second edition of
the Chronic Diseases Hahnemann incorporated these with his
own, and with some additional observations from three others,
raising the total list to 1082.
In spite of this extensive pathogenesis, Natrum carbonicum
has found very little employment. Hahnemann says that it
is useful in weakness of the stomach, leading to great dis
comfort from slight dietetic transgressions. Dr. Bayes has
found it give relief in subacute inflammatory irritation of the
whole alimentary mucous membrane, from the mouth to the
anus ; Dr. Madden thought well of it in deficient menstruation
in adult females ; Dr. Lippe commends it in headache from
exposure to the sun or to gaslight, such as Glonoin benefits ;
and Dr. Guernsey in inflammation of the external nose. But
it is hardly mentioned by the systematic writers on homæo
pathic therapeutics ; and to this correspond the conclusions
from recent experimentation that the soda salts, unlike those
of potash, have little specific action upon the system .
I speak of the common preparations of soda, such as the
carbonates and the acetates, which are used as antacids. But
we are transferred into another region when we come to
its combination with hydrochloric acid, the chloride of
sodium, or
Natrum muriaticum .
We prepare this salt in the same way as the carbonate.
Natrum muriaticum has a pathogenesis in the first edition
of the Chronic Diseases, consisting of 897 symptoms. A good
many are supplied by three associates, and of these Hahne
mann states that they were obtained on healthy persons by
taking globules saturated with the thirtieth dilution . In the
second edition the list has swollen to 1349 ; and most of the
560 NATRUM MURIATICUM .

additions are from Hahnemann himself, and pretty certainly

>

( with his earlier contributions) observed on patients taking

the same potency . Natrum muriaticum has also been
thoroughly re- proved by the Austrian Society. Their experi
ments ( in which many persons took part, using both the crude
salt and the attenuations) were published in the fourth volume
of the Esterreichische Zeitschrift.
I wish I could tell you that the results of this exhaustire
re-proving had rewarded the pains of the experimenters.
They are to me most disappointing. When I have said that
the provers generally became constipated while taking the
potencies ; that the liver was usually somewhat affected, one
prover having much biliary colouring matter in the urine;
that the sexual desire was diminished and ( in females) the
menstruation delayed ; that pains in the thumb and fore
finger were common, and the skin often showed signs of
irritation-I have summed up the main results of the
proving. It gives us little more than what had been already
elicited as the action of salt from the symptoms experienced
by those who had immoderately used it. These are a scor
butic degeneration of the blood and tissues; various eruptions
and ulcers upon the skin ; delay of menstruation ; and in
one man genital irritability with its accompanying depression.
Nor has physiological experimentation added anything
material to our knowledge. Münch and Plouriez have taken
large quantities of salt for days together, with little effect on
the blood, tissues, or secretions, save that the red corpuscles
of the former were diminished in number.
Therapeutically, however, Natrum muriaticum holds a very
respectable place in homeopathic practice ; though hardly
perhaps answering to Hahnemann's description of it as an
heroic medicine, and one of the most energetic antipsories.
Like Graphites, the association of constipation and deficient
menstruation are the features which chiefly suggest it ; but,
unlike that medicine, there should be much defective nutri
tion present, showing itself especially in emaciation with dry
 NATRUM MURJ ATICUM . 561

and ill-coloured skin . In a case of this kind which came

lately under my care , and where suspicions of organic
abdominal disease were entertained , a few occasional doses
of Natrum muriaticum 30 changed the whole condition, and
initiated a complete recovery. There was much depression
of spirits here ; and Dr. Bayes recommends the medicine
strongly in a form of passive hypochondriasis. “ There is,"
he writes, “ a sort of despairing hopeless feeling about the
future, accompanied by dryness of the mouth, irritable
mucous membrane, often with sore tongue and slight ulcera
tions, and almost invariably chronic constipation, with hard
stool."
Save in these chronic morbid conditions, the only use of
Natrum muriaticum which has established itself in homoeo
pathic practice is in intermittent fever, Wurmb and Caspar
spoke slightingly of it ; but Thorer, Neumann , and Hartlaub
found it effective, and an eminent American physician
Dr. Pearson - writes : “If there be in our Materia Medica any
:

such thing as a specific for intermittent fever, it is Natrum

muriaticum ." * It is of course in chronic agues especially
that it is so useful, and in the malarial cachexia when
assuming the features I have already described . But even
when the disease is recent it is reported very effective if the
characteristic symptoms are present . They are thus described
by Dr. Guernsey : “ exanthematous spots, looking like large
peas, on the lips ; an excessive thirst before and during the
chill, no thirst during the hot stage ; in the heat, or at its
close, a headache as though a thousand little hammers were
knocking upon the brain may begin , lasting a long time even
after the perspiration has passed away ; the attack comes on
in the fore part of the day ; after it passes off, the patient
wishes to retain a recumbent position , does not feel able to
get up , or go about anything ." Bähr commends it in chronic
cases where the patient has a greyish-yellow look , and the
spleen and liver are very much enlarged .
* United States Med. and Surg. Journal, i, 211 .
562 NATRUM SULPHURICUM.

This reputation of Natrum muriaticum in agues, gained

as it has been --with the higher dilutions of the drug, is not
a little curious when we remember that salt is one of the
febrifuges of repute in the old school, of course in substantial
doses . Piorry was a constant advocate of its use ; and Dr.
Willemin, in a report to the Board of Trade in Paris of his
experience in the East, says that in Damascus common salt
stopped the fever six times out of every seven ; two to four
doses of half an ounce each being generally sufficient for the
purpose. It was especially useful, he says, in anæmic in.
dividuals .*
As analogues of Natrum muriaticum I may mention
Alumina, Graphites, Lycopodium , Plumbum , and Zincum .
As regards dose, II may cite the observation of Dr. Watzke,
under whose superintendence the re-proving was carried out :
- “ I am, alas ! (I say alas ! for I would much rather have
upheld the larger doses which accord with current views) -I
am compelled to declare myself for the higher dilutions. The
physiological experiments made with Natrum muriaticum , as
well as the great majority of the clinical results obtained
therewith , speak decisively and distinctly for these pre
parations." All subsequent experience points in the same
direction .

Our third preparation of soda is the well- known “ Glauber's

)
salts ,”
Natrum sulphuricum .
It is prepared like the others.
Natrum sulphuricum has been proved by Schreter and
Nenning. Their results, with all else that is known of the
drug, have been collected by Dr. Hering into one of the
pathogeneses of his Materia Medica .
Dr. Hering's catalogue of symptoms is admirably arranged
for symptomatic prescribing, but is hardly helpful towards
* See Pereira, fourth edition , in loc.
 NATRUM SULPHURICUM . 563

enabling a definite conception to be formed of the special action

of the drug. It seems to cause disturbance of an ordinary
kind in well-nigh every region of the body. Dr. von Grau
vogl, however, has made a beginning towards defining its
curative sphere. He thinks it one of the most important reme
dies for what he calls the “hydrogenoid constitution ," where
the patients are hydramic. In such cases a gonorrhoeal ana
mnesis is, according to him, nearly always to be discovered ; and
he connects the morbid state with the sycosis of Hahnemann
and his contemporaries, and with the leucæmia of Virchow and
Bennett. I shall have more to say on this subject when I come
to Thuja , which medicine is generally used by him in the treat
ment of such patients. It is only given occasionally, however ;
while Natrum sulphuricum is continued persistently, four or
five drops of the third decimal dilution being taken several
times a day. Dr. von Grauvogl relates several cases illustra
tive of this treatment ; and in the twenty-second volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy you may read a cure of
diabetes mellitus by it, reported by Dr. Ægidi. Here the
Natrum was evidently the efficient agent, as only one dose of
Thuja 30-chosen because of the patient's gonorrhæal history
- was taken .
Previous to von Grauvogl, it had been used in America in
high dilutions for phthisis, chronic diarrhoea and flatulence, and
sciatica, to the last of which its symptoms strikingly point.
It is also said to inflame the lower end of the ileum ; and to
have proved curative accordingly in a case of recurrent in
flammatory colic, where the pain always commenced in the
right groin .
I have nothing further to say of analogous medicines or dose.

And now a few words about a medicine which , though in

cluded by Dr. Hale among his new American remedies, we yet
owe to one of our French colleagues. It is the small-flowered
yellow pond-lily
564 NUX MOSCHATA .

Nuphar lutea.
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
The proving to which I have alluded, by Dr. Pitet of Paris,
is given in Dr. Hale's book , with clinical observations. It
was conducted with the medium dilutions.
This proving confirms the ancient reputation of Nuphar as
an anaphrodisiac. It shows also its power to excite a diarrhæa,
which is most troublesome in the early morning. These are
the pathogenetic effects of Nuphar which have led to practical
results. Several cases of morning diarrhea, and of atonic
spermatorrhea, are reported in Dr. Hale’s article in which the
medicine was used with very happy results.
Agnus castus and Rumex crispus are the two medicines
which cover the double sphere of action of Nuphar lutea.
The dilutions from the first to the sixth have been success.
fully used.
I have nothing to tell you about Nux juglans, the walnut,
though it has been proved. But before coming to the “ Nur”
par excellence, I must speak of the nutmeg, commonly called'
Myristica, but by us
Nux moschata .
The activity of nutmegs is supposed to depend upon the
volatile oil they contain , in the proportion of 6 per cent. This
oil, or its solution in spirit ( 1 part in 10 ), is officinal in the
British Pharmacopoeia. The homeopathic preparation, how
ever, is aa tincture made from the nuts with rectified spirit.
Nux moschata was fully proved about 1833 upon twelve
male and nine female subjects by Dr. C. J. Helbig, who also
experimented upon himself. The results obtained were pub
lished in a monograph, entitled " Heraklides," which contained
also a compendium of all that had been said about the drug
in previous literature. In the first volume of the Revue de la
Matière Médicale spécifique, Dr. Roth has translated the pror
 NUX MOSCHATA . 565

mg, arranging the symptoms under the head of their subjects,

and also some of the cases of poisoning. Lastly, in his volume
of Materia Medica (1873) , Dr. Hering has made an exhaustive
compilation of Helbig's and all later materials for the know
ledge of the effects, pathogenetic and curative , of the drug.
>
Nutmegs are classed among the “ narcotics ; ” but their
narcosis is of a very distinctive character. Schmidius (1683)
relates the case of a nobleman, aged 36, in whom four nut
megs seemed completely to overwhelm the nervous system .
He remained in a state of coma vigil for three days, on
emerging from which his memory was entirely lost. Continued
fever supervened, with insomnia and palpitation ; and at length
paralysis of all the limbs. Reason and recollection did not
fully return till the expiration of eight days. This is an ex
treme case ; but Cullen relates a similar one of shorter dura
tion. In the latter, and in some other instances, delirium
succeeded the sopor. Upon Purkinje the effects were very
like those of Cannabis Indica,—the perception of time and
distance being impaired in the direction of exaggeration.
Looking over Hering's collection of symptoms, one is struck
by (besides the foregoing phenomena) loss of memory ; great
tendency to laughter ; headache with drowsiness, or sense of
looseness in the brain ; rush of blood to the head ; everything
looking large and red ; chalky taste ; dryness of mouth and
throat without thirst (Guernsey considers this a key -note of
the drug) ; sensation as if something grasped the heart ; and
pain in the shins as if the bone were smashed . To these I can
add two curious sensations of a patient of my own after
eating one nutmeg. These are - objects seem gradually to
diminish in size while looking at them ; sense of coldness
and emptiness under the heart, with distension.
The ordinary modern uses of Nux moschata are contained
in Pereira's words : “ Medicinally, nutmegs are used, like other
spices, as stimulants and carminatives . ” The latter action
seems to be of a specific nature, as the medicine is in increas
ing repute in the homeopathic school in the dilutions from
37
566 NUX MOSCHATA .

the first centesimal upwards for flatulent dyspepsia. Where

“ everything turns to wind , " as the patients express it ; where
there is great bloating of the stomach, oppressing the heart
and lungs, and causing pain behind the sternum ; where only
high -seasoned food can be digested, and in hiccough, Nux mos
chata is an excellent remedy. It is specially useful in nervous
subjects, as hysterical and pregnant women ; and where un
pleasant mental emotions will bring on the flatulence. The
other uses of the medicine have hardly yet been defined ; but
since it became a favourite one of Hahnemann's during his
later practice at Paris, it must be borne in mind and con
sulted as having latent possibilities. Dr. Helbig considers
women and children the most suitable subjects for it : and
that it is indicated where drowsiness or disposition to fainting
are present ; where the skin is cool and dry, and not inclined
to sweat ; and where there is aggravation from cool moist air,
and amelioration from external warmth . Teste recommends it
in retrocession of gout to the stomach .
Allied medicines are Moschus, Asafoetida, and Ambra .
Helbig employed the second dilution mainly. Hahnemann
would probably have given it in higher potency.
 LECTURE XXXII.

NUX VOMICA, OLEANDER.

I begin this lecture with a drug whose name will ever be

inseparably associated with homeopathy,
Nux vomica .
A tincture or triturations are prepared from the seeds of
the fruit of the plant.
We owe the pathogenesis of Nux vomica almost entirely to
Hahnemann himself. Of the 1300 symptoms ascribed to it
in the first volume of the third edition of the Reine Arznei
mittellehre, 1200 are his own ; the remainder are chiefly from
authors. We need only to add to his observations the account
of the poisonous effects of the drug given by the ordinary
treatises on Materia Medica, which those of Pereira and
Trousseau and Pidoux are the best, and we shall have before
us a complete picture of its action on the healthy. A hardly
less complete résumé of its therapeutical virtues is given by
Hartmann, in those Practical Remarks of his to which I have
several times referred .
The general physiological action of Nux vomica is on the
spinal cord , or rather on the cranio -spinal axis ; for, though
it has no influence on the cerebrum proper, it obviously affects
the motor and sensory centres at the base of the brain . The
condition set up by it is one of excitement and excitability.
In its first degree it manifests itself by the patient becoming
more susceptible to external impressions, as of light, sound,
touch, and variations of temperature. With this there are
568 NUX VOMICA .

tremors and twitchings of the limbs, with sense of weight and

Ľulness, and some rigidity of the muscles if attempt is made
to put them into action : at this time a sudden impression on
the surface, as a tap on the ham , will induce a slight convulsive
paroxysm . If the action go farther, a true tetanic condition
is induced. The spasms come on from any exciting cause,
however insignificant; or may even arise spontaneously. In
the worst cases they go on to asphyxiate and kill.
This is in the main Pereira's description. Trousseau and
Pidoux add some important features to the picture. The
spasms, they say, are often preceded by rigors, and sense as of
electric shocks in the sensory nerves. Formication also is
frequently felt, which may go on to intolerable itching, begin
ning on the head and extending over the whole body. Vertigo,
according to them , is the earliest symptom of the drug
having taken effect.
I have said that these phenomena result from aa direct action
of the poison on the cranio -spinal axis. Claude Bernard led
us to think that the morbid impression was first made upon
the sensory nerves and carried by them to the cord, whence
it was reflected upon the motor nerves and muscles. Later
experimentation , however, has proved the primary action to
be on the cord ; and M. Bernard's facts are readily explained
thereby, without the need of resorting to his hypothesis.
Stimulation of a sentient nerve may give greater results than
occur in health quite as well by increased excitability of the
centre as by that of the conducting trunk. The former will also
account for the preternatural acuteness of the senses noticed
in poisoning by this agent, and the readiness with which the
spasms can be excited by any impression on the surface — both
which phenomena seemed strongly to countenance M. Ber
nard's theory.
The condition set up in the nervous centres is described by
Drs. Todd and Bowman as one of increased polarity. It is
not in itself inflammatory, as is that of Belladonna ; although
if the drug be given when there is a tendency to inflamma
 NUX VOMICA . 569

tion , as when blood has recently been effused , this process may
be set up around the clot. There is, however, decided deter
mination of blood towards the cord , so that the vessels be
come dilated, and even—as van der Kolk has observed
ruptured, causing effusion here and there. Moreover, probably
from the intense molecular disturbance which is caused,
softening of the nervous centres has been found after death .
I must say a few words about the preternatural acuteness
of the senses caused by Nux vomica. Dr. Anstie, in his
Stimulants and Narcotics, has given some striking instances
of it. It displayed itself in hyperæsthesia of the surface;
photophobia, with flashes of fire before the eyes when looking
towards a bright light, or even in comparative darkness after
each dose of the medicine ; and painful sensibility to sound .
Dr. Anstie well shows, however, that there is no increase, but
rather a diminution , of the power of discriminative perception
in these cases , -- vision being impaired , and the effect of sounds
being described as deafening.
These toxic phenomena are due to the two alkaloids which
exist in Nux vomica - Strychnia and Brucia, the latter of
which seems to be aa feebler analogue of the former . But the
vomic nut itself has a wider range of action than is mani
fested here ; and this is exhibited by Hahnemann's provings,
to which we will now betake ourselves.
I. Nux has, as I have said, no influence on the cerebral
hemispheres themselves. Illusion, mental aberration, rage
are unknown in its pathogenesis. The only phenomena of
this kind are of sympathetic character, as anxiety, irascibility,
sullenness, unfitness for mental exertion. But the head may
show decided signs of being affected . In the first volume of
the Annals Dr. Chapman relates the case of “ a chemist who,by
way of bravado, took one night three or four drops of the
mother- tincture of Nux vomica. He awoke early next morn
ing with a feeling as if his head would burst. He was so
giddy that he could neither sit nor stand ; he had rushing
sounds in his ears , intolerance of light and sound, and he
570 NUX VOMICA .

could not see. His face was tumid , and he looked besotted ,
like a man reeling drunk .” All these symptoms — the vertigo,
the fulness and headache, and the intoxication - are repro
duced by Hahnemann . The aching occurs most frequently
in the occiput. The intoxication has also been observed by
Dr. Anstie as a result of the medicinal use of Strychnia . A
man who was taking the sixteenth of a grain three times a
day complained that the medicine “ made him drunk ;” and,
half an hour after his dose, appeared with the uncertain gait,
meaningless smile, and flushed perspiring cheeks character
istic of intoxication . *
II . Pereira shows that not the voluntary muscles only, but
those also of the alimentary canal, the respiratory organs, and
the urinary system are affected by Nux vomica. This the
provings entirely confirm . Spasmodic pains and irritable
expulsive actions occur frequently in all these regions. But
there also appear symptoms of irritation of the mucous mem
branes which are rarely or feebly seen in poisonings, or from
Strychnia . The combination of these two actions — in the
moderate degree induced by the doses used for proving - gives
several vivid pictures of dyspepsia and gastralgia. Consti.
pation also is present to a marked degree ; and is generally
accompanied with ( ineffectual) urging to stool. With this
there is much evidence, alike in liver, in abdomen , and in
rectum , of portal congestion. In the respiratory sphere we
have obstructive nasal catarrh , dry cough , and great con
striction of the chest.
III. Trousseau and Pidoux affirm that Nux vomica produces
troublesome erections, and more energetic venereal desires in
both sexes . From Hahnemann it appears that the catamenia
occur too early and too copiously under its use.
IV. His provings also reveal (what is indeed most probable)
that the excitation caused by the drug affects the vascular
nerves and the arteries, causing the febrile phenomena of chill,
heat, and sweat. Modern experimentation has confirmed this
* Stimulants and Narcotics, p. 151.
 NUX VOMICA . 571

observation , showing that Strychnia contracts the arterioles

and greatly increases the blood pressure ; and does this by direct
stimulation of the vaso-motor centre at the base of the brain .

I have now to speak of the therapeutical uses of Nux

vomica . Hahnemann found it in use mainly for dysentery
and intermittent fever ; and since his time it has been given,
on antipathic principles, for various forms of paralysis. But
his proving showed that it was in head affections, in dys
pepsia and other gastric derangements, and in constipation
that it was to find its chief sphere of usefulness ; and in these,
and in spasmodic conditions generally, it has played its great
part in homeopathic therapeutics. The knowledge of its
usefulness in dyspepsia and constipation has leaked out into
the other school ; and it now constantly finds a place in the
complex prescriptions there dispensed . We shall endeavour
to define its true place and action here. But first let us speak
of the general characteristics of the curative operation of Nux.
These have been plainly put by Hahnemann, and have stood
the test of large experience. It is specially suitable to vigorous
persons, of dry habit, tense fibre, ardent and irascible tem
perament, and tenacious disposition ; to patients addicted to
the use of much wine or coffee, and to those of sedentary
habits combined with considerable mental exertion : lastly,
where there is a tendency to sleep in the evening, to wake at
two or three a.m., and to be kept awake for hours by ideas
crowding in upon the mind, and then to sleep late in the
morning. It is an indication for Nux, moreover, when the
symptoms come on or grow worse at this early hour ; also
when they are increased by taking food or by mental exertion.
If you desire to follow up still farther these general charac
teristics of our drug, you will find them well put and
illustrated in Hartmann's Observations. English experience
has found the city man of business the typical patient for
Nux. His troubles are all nervous and dyspeptic ; and their
causes are worry, much mental with too little bodily exertion,
572 NUX VOMICA .

and generally indulgence at his only real meal, which is a

late dinner. Hence headache, sleeplessness, weight after food
with flatulence and heartburn , constipation , and irritability.
Of course Nux will not cure him unless he studies hygiene
more ; but it helps him greatly.
M. Teste bas called attention to the well- known toxicological
fact, that Nux vomica affects carnivorous animals far more
powerfully than it does the herbivora ; and connects this with
the kind of human constitution on which it manifests its
strongest influence.
We will now discuss the therapeutics of the drug in the
same order in which its pathogenetics have come before us.
I. The striking similarity between the phenomena of
Strychnia poisoning and those of tetanus would of course
suggest it on homeopathic principles as a remedy for the dis
ease . Stillé cites eight instances of traumatic tetanus being
cured by it .
While thus exquisitely homeopathic to tetanus, Nux would
seem no less perfectly antipathic to paralysis, and upon such
grounds has been largely used in its treatment. There seems
no doubt but that in cases of functional deficiency, whether of
motor or sensory nerves, the local employment of Nux vomica
or Strychnia has proved of decided service. Thus in simple
amaurosis, in prolapsus ani, and in the enuresis of the weak
or aged the hypodermic injection of Strychnia in the neigh
bourhood of the part affected has often been successful. Its
action here may be considered as analogous to that of
galvanism . But internal use of the drug as a remedy for
paralysis of central origin has been fraught with disappoint
ment ; and has frequently wrought mischief when the con
dition of the nervous centres has been one of congestion or
inflammation . Its use under these circumstances is therefore
now strongly deprecated in the old school : I need hardly
point out that to us the warning becomes an indication, as far
as it goes. Even in the old school they find it beneficial, if
only they reduce the dose. Mr. Charles Hunter injects sub
 NUX VOMICA . 573

cutaneously from one eightieth to one sixtieth of a grain of

Strychnia, and states that it removes the sensation of heaviness
or weight and the muscular twitchings, spasms, or cramps of
the paralysed parts. I need hardly remind you how readily
full doses of Strychnine excite these spasmodic actions in
palsied limbs. So Pereira says that when used locally for
amaurosis it causes sparks to appear before the eyes, most in
the affected one ; while Hartmann recommends it when such
sparks trouble the eyes, thinking it a symptom of cerebral
congestion .
II. From what has been said of the action of Nux vomica
on the head, it may be readily conceived that it plays an
important part in affections of this region . I will speak of
three of these — delirium tremens, apoplexy, and headaches.
1. The strong resemblance of the cerebral symptoms of Nux
to the effects of alcohol have led to its use in delirium tremens.
It does not reach this disease when at its height, as Belladonna,
Hyoscyamus, and Stramonium do ; but in its forming stage
and during convalescence it is very useful. It is also very
good for the morning vomiting, the trembling hands, and other
nervo -muscular affections of drunkards.
2. The character of the influence of Nux vomica on the
nervous centres, while unfitting it for actual inflammation of
the brain, makes it just the remedy for those congestive states
of the organ which predispose to apoplexy. Even when san
guineous effusion has taken place, Nux is often the best
medicine to give, unless the state of the local or general cir
culation is such as to call for Belladonna or Aconite . You will
find these statements well illustrated in the cases of apoplexy
recorded in Dr. Yeldham's Homeopathy in Acute Diseases .
3. Few medicines are more frequently useful in headache
than Nux vomica. You will see at once the chief form of the
affection in which it is likely to be advantageous — the head
ache of strong, plethoric adults, with congestion, giddiness,
flushed face, and constipation. But it is also ( in higher
dilutions) curative of such cephalalgiæ as clavus and migraine,
574 NUX VOMICA .

where the constitution suits Nux better than Ignatia. A

number of cases illustrative of its value are collected together
in Dr. Peters' Treatise on Headaches. To the headaches in
which we esteem it Dr. Ringer has added those consisting in
heat and weight at the vertex, whether occurring at the
menopausia or otherwise. Dr. Schrön commends it when the
headache begins with the vertigo spuria of Herz , which Nux
causes as markedly as does Ignatia.
III. I come now to a still more important sphere of the action
of Nux vomica - its influence over the disorders of the ali.
mentary canal. We need here to be discriminating ; for the
really great power of Nux in dyspepsia and constipation has
led to its abuse and even discredit. It is no uncommon thing
for homeopathic neophytes to take a pilule of Nux the first
time their evacuations delay, and except it to act like Aloes
or Colocynth. They fancy, moreover, that it will clean their
coated tongues, and disperse their bilious attacks, and indeed
be a remedy for “ indigestion " of all kinds. But the remem
brance of the physiological action of the drug will save us
from this indiscriminate use. Nux acts here as elsewhere
mainly upon the nerves and muscles. Hence its true place in
gastric disorders. The acute dyspepsia of which it is curative
is that caused by taking indigestible food. There is no par
ticular mucous disorder ; but on the other hand pain, vomit
ing with much retching, and frequent scanty motions with
colic and urging are present. The chronic dyspepsia of Nui
is essentially the same, but of course presents more variety.
It is one in which the nervous and muscular energy of the
stomach is defective and perverted . The food either causes
pain and — less commonly-vomiting, or it lies like a load at
the stomach, oppressing the brain, and soon developing much
flatulence. The tongue is coated at the posterior part only :
Dr. Bayes thinks this a characteristic sign for Nux. It will
be seen that this is just the dyspepsia of men of business and
intellectual workers, when they perform their tasks with hurry
and worry, and give neither brain nor stomach fair -play. Dr.
 NUX VOMICA . 575

Bähr, however, would extend the sphere of Nux to include

chronic gastric catarrh . The taste, both subjective and of
food, is either bitter or sour ; and there are eructations of the
same kind. “ The appetite is gone, yet there is a sensation
of hunger, which even increases to bulimia . . . The region
of the stomach is sensitive, especially after a meal, and
generally distended. The pains in the stomach are more
especially a hard pressure, less frequently tearing or crampy
pains.” He has here the concurrence of Dr. Ringer, who
esteems the drug highly in those catarrhal states of the
stomach which so often complicate organic disease elsewhere,
and also — from the homeopathic side - of Dr. Jousset. This
excellent writer, who touches no subject without illuminating
it, has just published in l'Art Médical two striking cases of
chronic gastritis cured by the drug in rare doses of a high
dilution . In his comments he characterises the three leading
affections of the stomach, gastritis, dyspepsia, and gastralgia ;
and shows that Nux is the leading remedy for them all. It
is the principal stomach medicine. In gastralgia I need
hardly demonstrate its fitness, when the pain is spasmodic
rather than neuralgic. You will find records of many cases
treated by it in Hempel, and in the eleventh volume of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy.
This is one of the affections in which our brethren of the
other school are not unwilling to take a leaf out of our book.
Dr. Anstie recommends the hypodermic injection of Strychnia
in doses of one hundred -and -twentieth of a grain to relieve
the pain of cardialgia, saying that he knows no such remedy
for it as this .
There are thus very few painful non-organic affections of
the stomach which may not be helped by this precious me
dicine. The same virtues display themselves in the intestines.
It is quite homeopathic to spasmodic colic from flatulence :
but other medicines — as Colocynth and Cocculus-are more
frequently used . Constipation is a well-known indication for
Nux vomica in complex cases. As an idiopathic affection,
576 NUX VOMICA .

moreover, it frequently requires this remedy. You may think

that the use of Nux must be antipathic here, as constipation
means atony of the intestines, and Nux is excitant and not
depressant thereto . The therapeutists of the old school re
commend it on these grounds. But I must point out that
constipation by no means always depends upon atony of the
intestines. Schroeder van der Kolk states that “ long ex
perience and a great number of post-mortem examinations
have satisfactorily proved to him that chronic constipation is
almost always dependent on constrictions in the descending
colon . ” And of the Nux constipation Dr. Carroll Dunham
well says *, “ this medicine does not diminish the action of the
intestine. It rather increases it, but at the same time renders
it inharmonious and spasmodic — a hindrance, therefore, and
not a help to evacuation . This is the reason why the consti
pation characteristic of Nux vomica is accompanied by fre
quent ineffectual desire for stool — the action of the intestine
being irregular and spasmodic, and the constipation resulting
from the irregularity of action , and not from inaction . ” It is
probably in a similar way that Nux occasionally relieves ileus,
and incarcerated, or even strangulated hernia . Dr. Imbert
Gourbeyre has studied the subject in l'Art Médical for 1860;
and numerous illustrations of this property of the drug
exist in homeopathic literature - Trousseau and Pidoux them
selves admitting that the claim has been substantiated.
Probably also the benefit occasionally obtained from this
medicine in dysentery is due to its control over the tormina
and tenesmus—which are nervo -muscular - rather than from
any action on the mucous membrane. There is a form of
diarrhæa, moreover, in which the undoubted usefulness of
Nux seems explicable in this way. It is where artificial food
disagrees with infants so far as to cause vomiting and purg
ing,but without setting up actual gastro -enteritis. Here I
suppose the same irritable state of fibre to be present which
in the adult induces constrictions which impede free evacua
* Amer. Hom. Review , vi, 154 .
 NUX VOMICA . 577

tion ; but in this case it leads to impatience and frequent

emptying of the intestinal canal .
The action of Nux upon the portal circulation has been
largely used in the school of Hahnemann. I cannot go so far
as Bähr, who thinks that the drug has a more specific relation
to the liver than to the stomach ; but its hepatic influence is
undoubted . In recent hyperemia of this organ ; in general
abdominal plethora ; and in hæmorrhoids, large and blind ,
hence resulting - Nux is an excellent remedy. In the two
latter affections it is much aided by Sulphur.
In disorders of the respiratory organs Nux vomica plays
a much less important part than in those of the alimentary
canal. It is very good, however, for dry coryza - the so - called
" stuffy cold ; " and for violent coughs, with little or no ex
pectoration , jarring the head, and straining the abdominal
muscles. Nux is obviously homeopathic to spasmodic asthma ;
and frequently plays an important part in its treatment.
There is a brilliant case on record treated by Hahnemann in
his early days, which teaches us that the medicine need not
be used in infinitesimal doses for this malady at any rate. You
may read it in his Lesser Writings. Dr. Kidd, also, states that
he considers Nux our best anti- asthmatic. I think it best
suited to purely spasmodic cases, where there is no bronchial
lesion , but a standing reflex excitability of the pneumogastric
to impressions made from without or through the stomach. I
prefer here the lowest triturations.
Still less frequently is Nux vomica required when the
urinary organs are affected. Its only uses here with which I
am acquainted are for the irritable bladder of gout or
alcoholism , and to relieve pain and spasm in the passage of
urinary calculi.
The stimulant action of Nux upon the sexual organs has
naturally led to its being employed in impotence ; but the
success seems rarely to have been more than temporary.
With us it is much esteemed in irritable conditions of the
male genital organs, whether primary or left behind by excess
 578 NUX VOMICA .

or masturbation, when the other symptoms correspond and the

general characteristics are present. In the female sphere we
find Hahnemann recommending it for the evils caused by too
frequent and too copious periods . Its influence here reaches
even as far as metritis. Hartmann writes : “ Nux is a very
admirable remedy in inflammation of the womb, and its
virtues in this complaint are lauded by many experienced
homeopathists, with whom I must join myself. Whether
the metritis has occurred in the unimpregnated uterus, or
during gestation , or after delivery, it matters not ; and just
as little influence has the particular part of the womb which
is affected .” This would hardly be expected à priori; but I
must say that in two cases of metritis after parturition which
I have had under my care, the effects of Nux were astound
ing. Dr. Lawrence Newton communicates a similar es .
perience.*
The ancient repute of Nux vomica in ague has been fairly
sustained in the school of Hahnemann . Its special indications
are of course the accompanying gastro -intestinal symptoms;
though it is said that the paroxysm itself points to it when
the heat precedes or mingles with the chill. Both Wurmb
and Caspar and Dr. Lord place it high among the remedies
required in actual practice ; and my own experience concurs
with that of Fleischmann and Russell in thinking that Nur
and Ipecacuanha in alternation most frequently control the
impure intermittents which come under our treatment in non
aguish districts. In his Lesser Writings + Hahnemann de
scribes such aa fever as epidemic in Germany in 1809, and points
to Nux and Arsenic as homeopathic to and curative of its
only varieties .
There are, of course, numerous other applications of Nux
vomica. You will always think of it when hyperæsthesia,
irritability, or spasm is present; when the patient presents
the constitution characteristic of it ; and when his troubles
* Brit . Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 243.
+ p. 628.
 NUX VOMICA . 579

own the causes and experience the aggravations I have

mentioned . Thus you will often be led to it in hypochon
driasis and spinal irritation ; and it will sometimes serve you
well in photophobia, and in the vomiting of pregnancy .
(
Stillé acknowledges its usefulness in this last affection " in
very minute doses.”
I will conclude by citing from Hartmann a typical case for
the application of the medicine :
“ Mad . B-, some thirty years old, who had suffered for many years
with a troublesome and distressing cough, lost her cough suddenly without
any cause ; instead of the cough, she was afflicted with a constant pres
sure, which sometimes became a griping, in the gastric region , which was
aggravated after every meal, and after drinking coffee became so much
exacerbated, that she was obliged to sit completely bent over. She was at
the same time afflicted with constriction and oppression of the chest, and
could only make a short inspiration, with which a partial hiccough was
always conjoined. Water -brash occurred frequently during the day : inap
petence : alvine evacuations hard, occurring every third or fourth day. She
had suffered from this complaint for full two years. I regulated her diet,
and cured her entirely in four weeks by the administration of two doses
of Nox vomica . After this she could eat with impunity ; she could even
occasionally indulge in coffee, without reproducing her complaint ; but she
dared not make it her daily drink.”
Ignatia — through its common possession of strychnia -
and Opium through its morphia and thebaia are the only true
spinal analogues of Nux vomica ; unless we except Atropia.
The tetanizing action of Aconite, of Cicuta , and of Hydro
cyanic acid is not so connected with increased reflex excita
bility. Bryonia acts most like Nux on the alimentary and
respiratory organs, though stopping short of its spasmodic
phenomena.
As regards dose, I must express my conviction that the full
virtues of this medicine can only be obtained by a free use of
all degrees of the scale of attenuation , from the mother
tincture or lowest triturations to the thirtieth dilution. The
repute it has obtained in the old school, Hahnemann's case of
asthma, and those of gastralgia cited by Hempel from Kopp's
550 NUX VOMICA .

Memorabilia, show what it can do in substantial doses. On

the other hand, all the earlier and many of the later homæo.
pathic cures wrought by Nux, which have given it such
a high place among our remedies, which make Hahnemann
speak of it as “ a polychrest most cherished and precious,"
were effected by the attenuations from 9 to 30, and
mainly by the latter. My own experience makes me as
fond of the thirtieth dilution as of the first decimal tritura
tion, and I should not like to be without either in their
proper places.
A word in conclusion about the chief alkaloid of Nui
vomica,
Strychnia . — Mr. Henry Robinson has enriched the Materia
Medica with two heroic provings of the liquor strychniæ , the
one prover being a man , the other a woman . Besides the
spasms, or attempts at spasm , which might have been expected
(these were especially sudden , severe, and painful in the
rectum ), several other symptoms were produced. The male
prover became prostrated with a fever, which is compared to
the adynamic intermittents of India ; and, as this passed over,
great irritation of the urinary organs set in, culminating in
an attack of inflammation of the left testicle and cord , and an
.abscess in the cellular tissue of the scrotum . We note also
continual full and bursting headache, with heat in the eyes ;
icy sensation all down the spine ; explosive cough ; intense
itching of the skin of the whole body, but especially of the
nose ; and sharp attacks of toothache, especially in the upper
teeth. You will find the record of these provings in the
twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the Monthly Homoeopathic
Review .
As Strychnia contains, in its most concentrated form , the
spasm-causing property of Nux vomica, it seems obvious to
use it as a homeopathic remedy for such conditions. I have
done so occasionally in the treatment of spasmodic asthma,
and should adopt the same course in tetanus. These are
.examples of pure spasm. But in the more complex forms of
 OLEANDER. 581

disease in which Nux is so beneficial, as in gastro - intestinal

disorders, I think we should suffer loss by substituting
Strychnia.
Dr. Walter Tyrrell, of Great Malvern , has published a
series of cases of epilepsy, in which the curative effects of
Strychnia were not a little remarkable. He thinks that “ its
value lies in the effect it has in deadening that condition of
exalted sensibility and activity of the medulla oblongata , which
most recent authors consider to be the predisposing cause of
the disease. ” If it does this, it must be by homeopathic
action ; and so indeed Dr. Tyrrell admits. His success, as
reported by himself, is something marvellous : and the subject
:

may repay investigation . His doses are those usual in the

old school.
For the few minutes remaining to us to -day I will occupy
you with the laurel rose, Nerium
Oleander.
The tincture is prepared from the fresh leaves.
There is a pathogenesis of Oleander in the first volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 342 symptoms from
Hahnemann and five others, and 10 from authors.
Oleander seems to be a narcotic of moderate intensity.
Hahnemann claims to be the first to introduce it into medi .
cine ; and, if he means in modern times, he is justified in so
doing : but Galen used it. Hahnemann thinks it likely to be
useful “ in certain kinds of mental alienation, as distraction
( Zerstreutheit ) ; in some painless paralyses ; and in eruptions
on the head and other affections of the hairy scalp .” The
drug seems certainly to have an elective affinity for the skin .
66

The skin of the body is very sensitive all over : it becomes

sore , raw , and painful, merely by the friction of the clothes : :

for example, the skin of the neck becomes so from the rubbing
of the cravat, that of the thighs from the rubbing of wide
trousers when walking.” And again, “ Forty hours after
38
582 OLEANDER .

taking the dose, gnawing itching, as of an eruption over the

whole body, while undressing.” Symptoms 122 and 123 are :
“ The power of speech is almost entirely lost, the breathing
being natural. She attempted to answer when asked, but she
was only able to utter sounds, but no intelligible words."
They are taken from a narrative of poisoning with the plant
by Morgagni ; and have led to its recommendation for paralysis
of the tongue. As I read the original, however, they merely
express the extreme debility of the patient. From sympt. 189
Hartmann suggests it for lienteria. If China and Ferrum
ever fail you in this disorder, Oleander might be worth a
trial.
I can tell you nothing about allied medicines or doses, sate
that Hahnemann recommends the sixth dilution .
 LECTURE XXXIII.

OPIUM , ORIGANUM , OSMIUM , PÆONIA, PARIS , PETROLEUM ,

PETROSELINUM , PHELLANDRIUM .

Our first and chief subject to -day is a drug which stands

at the head of the list of the medicines of the old school, but
occupies only a second -rate position in ours,
Opium .
A tincture prepared in the usual manner, or triturations, are
recommended by Hahnemann , and used in our practice.
There is a pathogenesis of Opium in the first volume of the
Reine Arzneimittellehre. Of its 662 symptoms, 144 only are
from provings on the healthy; the remaining four fifths being
taken from authors. The examination which Dr. Langheinz
has instituted into a good many of these last shows them to
be of very dubious purity, either as regards the mode in which
the drug was given or the subjects of its influence. Hahnemann
indeed depreciates them himself, saying that they are mostly
secondary effects, and therefore (according to his view ) not
available for homeopathic application . But to add to his own
and his ( four) fellow -observers’ symptoms we have two excel
lent provings of Opium in small but substantial doses. The
one is by Professor Jörg and twenty of his pupils ; the other by
Dr. Eidherr, of Vienna, in which ten persons besides himself
took part. The full record of the latter is given in the first
volume of the Journal of the Austrian Homeopathic Society :
its schema of results is translated in the twenty -second volume
of the British Journal of Homoeopathy.
584 OPIOM .

Opium is, as you well know , a substance of very complex

constitution. It contains a number of alkaloids - Morphia,
Narceia , Meconia , Cryptopia, Codeia , Thebaia , and others ,
each of which has its own distinctive action . The effect of
Opium is the result of the composition of the forces of these
several ingredients. But, being so, it is for us the fact with
which we have to deal. Opium is the form in which its con
stituents are given us in nature : as a single substance it has
been proved on the healthy and tested on the sick. It thus
becomes a medicine per se. So far as the pathogenetic effects
of any of its ingredients are known, so far they too can be
used therapeutically. But they cannot replace Opium , nor
Opium them. Of one or two of their number I shall have to
speak presently ; but our concern just now is Opium itself
as a whole.
Hahnemạnn says of Opium that its effects are more difficult
to appreciate than those of most other medicines ; and so sub
sequent observers have found. Its action is as complex as its
composition, and it has not been easy to unravel it. Curious
and inconsistent theories have been formed to account for the
phenomena — as that the drug is stimulant to some parts of the
nervous system , but depressant to others; that it stimulates at
first, but narcotizes afterwards ; that it is a stimulant in a
moderate dose, but a narcotic in a large one. None of these
explanations has ever satisfied my own mind ; and at various
times during the last sixteen years * my attention has been
directed to the subject with the hope of penetrating its
mystery. I think I am clearer about it now than ever I was
before : at any rate, you shall have my most mature thoughts
:

on the matter.
The facts are these. Taken in a moderate dose, Opium
seems to act as a stimulant. This effect is especially felt in
depressed and chilly conditions of the body, as in hunger and
catarrh as described by Dr. Anstie, in the physical and mental
wretchedness which often makes the poor resort to it, and
* See London Medical Review , 1860 : Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi .
 OPIUM . 585

which - occurring as a secondary result of intoxication with it

-drives the habitual opium-eater to “ take aa hair of the dog
that bit him .” There are some, however, who can induce the
stimulant effects of Opium in their ordinary condition of body.
But larger doses are here required, and some approach to
narcosis is often seen in the ending of the excitement in a
comatose sleep.
Again , even when taken in quantities large enough to pro
duce undoubtedly poisonous effects, Opium seems to excite
some parts of the nervous centres. Habnemann observes that it
exalts the irritability of the voluntary muscles, and stirs
imagination and courage ; and under these two heads the
phenomena of what may be called its poisonous excitation may
be classed . In the first division we have the observations,
multiplying upon us of late, that in the lower animals and in
the young human subject Opium is very apt to cause con
vulsions, sometimes of a clonic but quite as often of a true
tetanic character. For the exaltation of the imaginative
powers which it may cause we need not go beyond the “ Con
fessions " of De Quincey ; and as to the emotions generally,
it is well known that Orientals use Opium as the Western
nations use alcohol, to spur flagging courage and excite
desire.
On the other hand , it is confessed by all that the full effect
of Opium is pure narcosis — that is, depression and paralysis
of the whole functional activity of the nervous system. The
sensory nerves may first lose their powers, and dull aching
pains may accompany the process. But the brain itself soon
shows it, first - it may be in a low muttering delirium , but
then in the supervention of that condition which at its height
is called “ coma.” Coma is no intensification of natural sleep.
It is not sleep at all, but a stupor ; from which the patient
may for a time be readily roused, going off again directly, but
which ultimately deepens into entire unconsciousness. With
these conditions of sensation and ideation , the motor powers
are equally abolished : the respiration also becomes weaker,
 586 OPIUM .

and the heart's action slow , until finally death ensues from
the failure of the former function .
The difficulty is to account for the phenomena of stimulation
which appear here and there in the action of a drug so
unquestionably narcotic. Now of those which show them
selves in the motor, imaginative, and emotional spheres, Dr.
Anstie — who in his treatise on Stimulants and Narcotics has
contributed so much thought and observation to this subject
-gives, I think, a satisfactory explanation. He shows (what
Hahnemann had noticed before him ) that while the fancies
and desires are aroused, the higher faculties of the mind are
already dulled . He points out that in the normal state of
being we keep down the animal within us ; but that in intoxi.
cation - whether with Opium or alcohol - our powers of control
are relaxed, and the lower nature asserts itself loudly ere it
too yields to the narcotic influence. This is confessedly true
as regards alcohol, and it is an easy step to apply it to Opium .
Again , Dr. Anstie argues that it is quite unjustifiable to
assume that convulsion is an evidence of exalted motor energy.
It may mean its irregular distribution and fitful discharge;
it may imply an unbalanced activity from withdrawal of the
control of the higher centres ; but in neither of these cases is
any exalted functional vigour present.
But I would now go a step farther than Dr. Anstie, though
in the same direction . The apparent stimulation wrought by
large doses, he maintains, is really paralysis of some parts of
the nervous centres allowing undue manifestation of the rest.
I think that the same explanation will account for the appa
rent stimulation wrought by small doses, which in his eyes is
a real one. It is to me inconceivable that a substance which
in moderate quantity excites any function should in a some
what larger one depress it. I know well how this may be
when the dose is an overwhelming one - as in the analogous
case of an over-strong galvanic current. But the question
here is of the different effect of half a grain of morphia and
of two grains. No sudden shattering destruction of vital
 OPIUM . 587

energy can be ascribed to the latter dose ; yet we are

asked to believe that its influence is paralysing, while
that of the former is stimulating. I cannot think it ; and
as there is no doubt about the paralysis, I question the
stimulation .
What part of the nervous system , then, is there whose
depressed activity will account for excitement elsewhere ? I
answer — the sympathetic. There is an apparent antagonism
and contradiction between the nerves of this order and those
of the cerebro -spinal class which accounts for many phenomena
of drug -action and disease. If we stimulate a sympathetic
ganglion, the nerves animated by it cause the arteries they
supply to contract. Less blood accordingly flows through the
corresponding part of the body : it becomes cold, pale, and
shrunken, and its nervous, muscular, and secretory activity is
diminished . If, on the contrary, we divide the vascular nerves
of any organ , precisely the opposite results occur. Its circula
tion is increased , and its functional energy for the time
exalted , or, at any rate, more rapidly expended. If, therefore,
a depressing agent makes its influence first felt in the sympa
thetic system , its earliest phenomena will be those of appa
rent stimulation, from the increased flow of blood thereby
allowed.
That Opium does depress the sympathetic from the very
beginning of its action I hold to be proved from a number of
consentaneous phenomena, which we have not yet taken
into account. Among these we have that diminished irritability
of the involuntary (non -striated ) muscles which Hahnemann
noted as co - existing with excitement of the voluntary set.
Constipation of the torpid kind is the well -known effect of
opiates; and Trousseau and Pidoux have called attention to
the corresponding condition — sluggish and therefore difficult
excretion - as induced in the bladder . Their careful observa .
tions, moreover, confirm the diaphoretic action of the drug,
and show that the perspiring skin is also hot and flushed ,
which it would be from vaso -motor depression. The hot skin
588 OPIVM.

of Belladonna, which we have ascribed to tissue - irritation, is

dry, as in scarlatina . As is usual when the skin is active, the
secretions of its internal continuation—the alimentary mucous
membrane -- are deficient ; but the dryness of the mouth and
throat, which Trousseau and Pidoux mention as the first effect
of the endermic application of Morphia, points to a congested
condition of the mucous lining of the digestive tube. In the
face the same condition is shown by flushing, in the head by
heaviness, giddiness, and somnolency, and in the eyes by in
jection . But in this last region a phenomenon occurs which
is yet more significant, and which alone seems to me aa key to
the whole condition.
I refer to the contraction of the pupil, so characteristic of
Opium poisoning. It is, as Dr. Harley says, “ in man the most
constant of all the effects of Opium , and comes on in ten or
fifteen minutes after the subcutaneous use of the drug. It
)
occurs independently of hypnosis." What is its explanation ?
Of late years the tendency of opinion has been to regard it as
due to stimulation of the third nerve : this view is maintained
by Harley, Ringer, and Wood . I am , however, quite unable
to assent to it, and must still maintain the position I took up
in 1860, that it is the result of sympathetic depression. The
difficulty which would arise from the continuance of the firm
contraction even after the third nerve must itself have lost its
energy is removed by the later researches into the structure of
the iris, which have shown it to be more an erectile than &
muscular organ . Thus the contraction induced by division or
depression of the sympathetic is due to iridal congestion as
much as to unbalanced activity of its circular fibres, and
answers to the small pupil of plethora or apoplexy. With
this accords the observation of Dr. Anstie, that shortly before
death from opium poisoning the pupils dilate . The vessels.
are now emptied here as all over the surface, which is pale
instead of flushed as heretofore .
Let us now , with this thought in our minds, read a few
instances and descriptions of the early effects of Opium , and
 OPIUM . 589

see if it will not explain them , and harmonise them with the
well-known phenomena which follow .
First, let Dr. Harley relate the results of injecting one sixth
of a grain of Morphia behind the trochanter of a patient
suffering from sciatica. “After ten minutes," he writes,
" there was giddiness and somnolency, and she fell asleep.
On waking an hour after she complained of being very giddy,
and said that everything was running round. The cheeks and
forehead were hot and flushed , the hands hot ; she felt hot
all over. The pulse was increased in volume and power. The
pupils had contracted from } to ļ of an inch out of the
light; an hour later they were 4. The tongue was clean and
wet .”
Next, let us take Dr. Phillips' description of opiate poison
ing. “ When the quantity is very large, and the form such as
to permit rapid absorption of the whole, the course of symptoms
is as follows: the patient, if an adult, quickly becomes con
scious of a sense of fulness in the head, which seems to
commence in the nape of the neck, and to spread therefrom ;
and in the course of aa few minutes feels great and increasing
drowsiness, and a sensation of general heat, which increases
to an almost intolerable degree, and is then accompanied by
sweating.”
Passing now from health towards disease, we have Dr.
Anstie's graphic description of the effect of a small dose of
Opium upon himself when suffering from hunger or catarrh,
to which I have already referred. In both these cases the
surface is chilly, the arterioles are contracted ; and he notices
especially the pleasant feeling of warmth which spread over
his body as the drug began to take effect. Again, let us look
at a patient in the first stage of the paroxysm of ague. The
skin is pale, cold, and dry ; the circulation and respiration
quick and feeble ; the pupils dilated : everything shows vaso
motor excitation . When in this condition , says Sir Thomas
Watson, a full dose of laudanum was given (by Dr. Trotter),
in most cases " after few minutes an exhilaration of spirits
590 OPIUM .

was perceived : the pulse from being weak , quick , and some
times irregular, became full, less frequent, and equal; an
agreeable warmth was diffused over the whole frame, and
every unpleasant feeling vanished, sometimes in a quarter of
an hour. The patients were themselves surprised at the sudden
change in their sensations."
Lastly, I may mention one of the facts most frequently
brought to light in the experiments conducted under the
superintendence of Dr. Hughes Bennett to inquire into the
antidotal action of meconate of morphia and sulphate of
atropia .* It was that vessels turgid with blood under the
influence of the former contracted considerably when the latter
was administered ; and we have already seen that atropia,
which characteristically dilates the pupil, is excitant to the
sympathetic.
I think, then, we may fairly conclude that Opium is through.
out its action aa direct paralyser of the nervous system , and
that the apparent stimulation present during its earlier effects
is due to the removal of the restraint exercised on the
circulation by the vascular nerves. It is a phenomenon
analogous to those observed in the face when the cervical
sympathetic is divided, and to those which occur in the body
generally when the ganglionic centres are depressed by
ice- bags applied to the spine. We thus bring the whole action
of the drug under one uniform and intelligible description.
We have only now to consider the meaning of the changes in
the respiratory and cardiac movements induced by it ; and to
have brought before our minds the epiphenomena of its
intoxication.
I. Opium kills, as we have seen, by suspending the respira
tion. The movements of the chest begin to slacken soon after
its poisonous influence is established : breathing then becomes
diaphragmatic only ; it is slow , sighing, and irregular, and at
last stops. All this is easily accounted for by the gradual
paralysis induced by the drug, first in the sensory excitants of
* See Researches into the Antagonism of Medicines (Churchill), 1875.
 OPIUM . 591

respiration, and then in the motor agents of the process ; later,

too, the breathing is affected by the congestive coma of the
brain , as it is in apoplexy. The pulse is affected earlier still,
viz . in the so -called stimulant stage of opiate action ; it is then
full, somewhat quickened , and stronger. But it falls with the
respiration ; and in the second stage of the poisoning is cha
racteristically slow, while remaining full. Experiment seems
to have demonstrated that this retardation of the heart's
action is due to the inhibitory influence of the vagi ; and the
condition of the brain seems to explain how the cerebral
centres of the nerves may well be irritated , as they are, e.g. in
acute hydrocephalus and (again ) in apoplexy.
II . The after -effects of Opium , when the sopor has passed
off, are very like those which follow an alcoholic debauch
nausea, anorexia , headache, chilliness, listlessness, sleepless
ness, constipation. They are not contraries of the state pre
viously induced, but merely alternating opposites, oscillations
of the disturbed balance : the chilliness and insomnia imply
:

the same depressed vitality of the nervous system as did once

the heat and sopor. These epiphenomena are best seen in
the unhappy subjects of opium-eating, whose whole life is
spent in such morbid vicissitude.
We now come to the curative effects of our drug ; and must
first inquire how far the induction of its physiological
action is justifiable in disease . This would seem a strange
question to the therapeutists of the old school. But, if you
have followed me thus far, you will have seen that the great
aim of homeopathic treatment is to avoid such physiological
action, to induce it only up to the point at which it neu
tralises aa similar condition already present, and then to stay
the hand. To use Opium , therefore, to compel sleep, to allay
pain or spasm , and to check excessive secretion , would with
us be only tolerable when we had no similarly acting medicines
on which we could rely for the purpose ; and even then we
should feel it a question for grave consideration whether
remedy or disease constituted the greater evil.
592 OPIUM .

Hahnemann has some excellent remarks on this subject.

“ A short cough , ” he says, " which has been occasioned by a
cold, a recent trembling caused by fright, a diarrhea which
has been suddenly occasioned by fear, by a cold or other
slight causes ; retching, which has come on in consequence
of a moral emotion, as loathing, & c., may yield to Opium ,
and sometimes do yield suddenly, because all that Opium
requires to do in these affections is to suppress them for a
short while, in order to enable the organism to remove in the
meanwhile all disposition to these affections, and to effect its
restoration to health by means of its own inherent recupera
tive power ." The same principles would apply to the
treatment of recent and fugitive pains and spasms, and of
the chilly and miserable state of commencing influenzal
catarrh. But in morbid conditions of more permament and
recurring character it must always be a grave question whether
we shall resort to the palliative medication of opiates. We
are launching upon a boundless ocean when we once begin it;
and the medical world teems with recorded cases (and still
more unrecorded ) of its pernicious influence. Morphiomania,
it is found, can be induced as readily as dipsomania ; and
what sort of nervous system will its subjects transmit to their
offspring ? God forbid that we should deny to the sufferers
from incurable disease any relief from the pains which
agonize them ; but wherever cure is possible, I am sure that
we are only diminishing our patients' chances and adding to
their distresses by inducing the narcotism of Opium in their
systems.
The abandonment of opiates must be to a new convert to
homeopathy one of the hardest trials involved in his change
of practice. He need not necessarily do it all at once. Let
him feel his way . Let him see how far the more numerous
and more potent specifics he now possesses will enable him to
do without them . The cough, the diarrhea, the neuralgia,
which of old he hushed up by poisoning the nerves, now find
in his new armoury their direct remedies. Let him keep his
 OPIUM . 593

opiates for cases otherwise irremediable ; and their use will

become rarer and rarer. For myself, I can safely say that
during fifteen years of homeopathic practice I have not found
one patient in five hundred who required them .
We turn, then, to the homeopathic applications of Opium,
and find these more limited than might have been expected.
Pereira indeed gives a long list of affections in which it is
contra -indicated and objectionable ; and these are of course
the very conditions to which it is applicable according to the
method of similarity. But his statements are too broad and
general; and Hahnemann foresaw truly when he said :
“ Opium is one of those drugs the primary effects of which
seldom correspond homeopathically to the symptoms of
disease. ” He moreover pointed out with great sagacity the
two leading morbid conditions to which it really corresponds.
9
“ Opium is a specific,” he wrote, “ for certain kinds of the
most obstinate constipation.” It holds a high place among
us in the treatment of this disorder : reaching even to
intestinal obstruction when of a paralytic nature, and to
incarcerated hernia . We also esteem it the principal remedy.:
for lead-colic, and suppose that it acts here by removing the
constipation. In these latter uses we are at one with our
brethren of the old school ; but this because they are herein
unconsciously homeopathising. Opium is also a specific,
Hahnemann continues, " for acute fevers characterised by a
sopor bordering upon stupor, and by absence of any complaint,
snoring with the mouth open , half -jerking of the limbs, and
burning heat of the perspiring body.” The cerebral symptoms
of fever, indeed, quite as often remind one of the effects of
Opium as of those of Hyoscyamus or Belladonna : and in
such cases it will be found very useful. The drowsiness of
which this is the intensest form is always a special indica
tion for Opium : and may sometimes present itself as a

morbid state per se, when there is little difficulty about the
choice of the medicine. Thus Dr. Bayes recommends it in
passive cerebral congestion, with somnolence after meals, in
 594 OPIUM .

patients predisposed to apoplexy ; and Dr. Drury finds it

helpful in uræmic coma . Opium should also be occasionally
serviceable in headaches like those it causes ; and in the
atonic dyspepsia of drunkards. It seems to paralyse the
muscular fibres of the fundus of the bladder rather than
those of its sphincter (herein just the reverse of Belladonna):
and is accordingly remedial in paralytic retention of urine.
I have reserved the relation of Opium to two important
cerebral affections, delirium tremens and apoplexy. Resembling
as it does so very closely in its action that of alcohol, it ought
to find a place in the homeopathic treatment of the drunkard's
mania . But I cannot claim the ordinary use of it in this
disease as an instance of the operation of the law of similars.
There is very little recorded experience of delirium tremens
in our literature. In the cases I have myself seen, Hyos
cyamus or Belladonna were better indicated than Opium ;
whose delirium , moreover, is without hallucinations. - In
apoplexy, Opium has been a good deal used in our school.
It is, however, very questionable whether the symptomatic
resemblance, undoubted as it is, warrants its administration
here. What we have to treat in apoplexy is not the extra
vasation, which is irremediable, but that which has caused
the rupture of the degenerated blood vessel ; and which, if
allowed to continue, threatens to increase the mischief. This
cause may be either an excitement of the general circulation
or an active congestion of (i. e. attraction of blood to ) the
brain. In either case is Opium truly homeopathic to the
morbid condition ? Aconite is our substitute for the lancet in
the former, and Nux vomica or Belladonna seems to me the
true pathogenetic analogue to the latter. Where extravasation
has not occurred, but active congestion is the beginning and
the ending of the matter, these medicines seem to me
to cover the whole malady. But I can conceive it possible
that where extravasation has taken place, and the danger
arises from oppression of the vital parts at the base of the
brain , a few doses of Opium might be of service, as the drug
 OPIUM . 595

would certainly be homeopathic to this portion of the dis

order. In this connection the remark of Dr. Ringer must be
borne in mind, that “ effusion of blood into the pons Varolii
will produce symptoms almost identical with those of opium
poisoning . ”
Opium has aa certain amount of reputation in the treatment
of diabetes . If it does more than palliate symptoms, it must
be, I think, in virtue of its homeopathicity to the disease.
Dr. Coze, of Strasburg, wishing to determine its action on
glycogenesis, injected a solution of fifteen grammes of muriate
of morphia in distilled water into the jugular vein of a rabbit .
The urine was not examined ; but the quantity of sugar in
the liver was found more than doubled , and likewise that
contained in the arterial blood.* Bernard, too, has lately
informed us that morphia determines glycosuria after the same
manner as woorara and puncture of the floor of the fourth
ventricle, viz. by increasing the circulation through the
liver.t
Another homeopathic use of Opium in the old school is.
the employment of it, in the shape of small doses of Dover's
powder, to check the sweats of phthisis. This preparation
-compounded of opium , ipecacuanha, and sulphate of
potash - is well known as a diaphoretic in ordinary practice.
Cannabis Indica is the only real analogue I know to
Opium .
Save in intestinal affections, the higher attenuations seem
most in favour.

Before leaving Opium , I must say something as to the dis

tinctive action of some of its chief constituents .
Morphia, of all these, most nearly represents the full action
of the parent drug, and I have freely used the observations
of its action when speaking of that of Opium. The only re
* See Brit. Journ. of IIom ., xxiv, 253.
+ London Medical Record , vol . i .
See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiii, 108.
 596 OPIUM .

maining ones I care to notice are the vomiting and the itching
of the skin it causes. Of the former I shall speak under the
head of Apomorphia. The latter is a frequent and marked
effect of the alkaloid . It is rarely associated with any erup
tion ; and should indicate Morphia as a remedy in prurigo.
Codeia very much resembles Morphia, but the tendency to
convulsive action is more pronounced under its influence than
that which leads to coma . A pathogenesis of it, derived
from several sources , is given by Dr. Allen in his Encyclopædia;
and in a note thereto two cases are mentioned in which invo
luntary twitchings of the eyelids were removed by it in the
attenuations.
Narceia, on the other hand, is a pure hypnotic ; but its
effects of any kind are feeble. Much the same may be said
of Meconia, though it is a little more active ; and of Cryptopia,
which Dr. Harley's experiments show to be more potent still.
We could only use these substances in soporose conditions ;
and nothing seems gained by substituting them for Opium
itself.
Narcotia is moderately convulsive and hypnotic in its
action ; but the point of most interest about it is that it has
anti -malarial properties like those of quinine. Thebaia seems
to be the alkaloid in which reside the tetanizing powers. The
spasms resemble those of Aconite, of Cicuta, and of Hydro
cyanic acid rather than those of Strychnia .
The last ingredient of Opium of which I shall speak is
Apomorphia , which indeed is no natural constituent of the
drug, but a derivative from morphia obtained by heating it
with excess of hydrochloric acid. It has been found to con
tain in special intensity the emetic properties of morphia
itself. Trousseau and Pidoux had long ago studied these,
and shown them to be most strongly manifested when the drug
was applied externally, and so to be of cerebral rather than of
gastric origin. The same inference was drawn by Dr. Wood
from the fact that the sickness which follows intoxication by
Opium is brought on whenever the patient raises his head.
 ORIGANUM VULGARE . 597

Apomorphia has been largely tested by Drs. Gee* and Black

leyt in this country, and by a number of foreign observers, and
has been found to be a prompt and powerful emetic, acting
directly upon the nervous centre of the process.
When Dr. Blackley's paper was read before the British
Homeopathic Society, Dr. Cooper stated that he had suc
ceeded in removing with Apomorphia the distressing vomiting
connected with a tumour in the brain. Dr. Dyce Brown,
whose prescriptive right it seems to be to turn these new dis
coveries to homeopathic account, soon followed with a series of
cases of vomiting, in which Apomorphia , in the third dilution,
proved promptly curative. It was most beneficial, as might
be expected, when the vomiting was reflex ; but it helped even
the gastric form of the trouble.
I shall pass briefly over the remaining medicines of our
course to -day.
Our information regarding the wild marjoram ,

Origanum vulgare ,
is derived from a paper by Dr. Gallavardin , of Lyons, pub
lished in L'Art Médical for 1865, and translated in the fifteenth
volume of the North American Journal of Homøopathy.
The oil of Marjoram has long been in domestic repute as a
stimulating emmenagogue. Dr. Gallavardin , who proved it
on an old man and two young women , found it produce in the
latter considerable sexual excitement. He has recorded ,
moreover , eight cases of erotomania of various degrees in the
female, in which the action of Origanum , generally in the
third dilution , was most satisfactory. The tincture is prepared
from the fresh plant.
I have next to mention the rare metal, called
* Transactions of the Clinical Society, vol. ii.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxi, 497.
# Ibid, xxxii, 497.
39
595 OSMIUM .

Osmium .
Triturations are prepared for homeopathic use .
Dr. Hering has collected, in one of the pathogeneses of his
volume of Materia Medica, all that was known of Osmium to
that time (1873) . In the sixteenth volume of its Bulletin,
the Homeopathic Medical Society of Paris has, through Dr.
Ozanam , put on record a recent case of poisoning in a worker
with the metal; and has also translated the experiments of
Hoffbauer related in the third volume of the Archiv. This
Hoffbauer, however, was the notorious Fickel, whose endeavour
to palm spurious provings on homeopathy makes anything
from his pen suspicious. Dr. Hering does not include him
in his list of authorities, among whom , nevertheless, are five
provers of the metal, one of them Dr. Stokes, of Liver.
pool.
The workman I have mentioned died of the intense bron .
cho -pneumonia induced by the emanations from Osmium .
But this action on the air-tubes—so far at least as the upper
part is concerned - is not localonly ; for the provers had great
hoarseness and cough. Gmelin's experiments on animals
show the oxide to cause death in convulsions without signs of
inflammation , evidencing an action on the nervous system .
In the provers this is shown by headache, chiefly supra -orbital,
and very marked dimness of vision ; also, perhaps, by the
genital excitement experienced. Osmium also acts on the
kidneys, the urine being dark and scanty in the provers, and
albuminous in the workman I have mentioned , in whom after
death the so -called second stage of Bright's disease (that is,
the large white kidney) was found established. This man
had also a papular and desquamating eruption of the
arms.
There is thus a good deal in the pathogenetic action of
Osmium which, applied upon the homöopathic principle,
promises good therapeutic result. It is comparable with
Manganum , Selenium , and perhaps Arsenicum .
 PARIS QUADRIFOLIA. 599

My next medicine is the peony,

Pæonia officinalis,
of which we prepare a tincture from the fresh root. This, it
is said, must be gathered in Spring ; when August comes, its
power has been lost .
There is .a short pathogenesis of Pæonia in the twenty -first
volume of the Hygea , mainly consisting of symptoms observed
by Dr. Geyer on himself and three others, who all took sub
stantial doses of the mother - tincture . There is little in it
worthy of note, and the plant has scarcely received any
medicinal employment. But one of its effects— “ painful
ulcer at the anus, with exudation of a fætid moisture ” -led
Dr. Ozanam * to use it in a similar condition occurring idio
pathically ; and his success induced him to extend its appli
cation to other ulcers, with rarely failing benefit. Dr.
-
Guérin -Méneville says that, “according to him, Pæonia would
be efficacious in every ulceration seated below the umbilicus.”
But Dr. Ozanam only states that his experience had been
limited to this part of the body ; while he ends his paper with
a fresh case in which an ulcer of the breast readily healed
under its use . He used the first three dilutions, either
externally alone, or also internally.
And now a few words about the “herb Paris ,” or true
love

Paris quadrifolia .
The entire plant is used for the tincture.
Paris bas a good pathogenesis - symptoms from provings of
it by twelve persons (among whom was Hahnemann himself)
being given in Hartlaub and Trinks' third volume, and in the
eighth and thirteenth volumes of the Archiv. It has rarely
received any therapeutic application ; but I mention it that
See Bull. de la Soc. Med . Hom . de France, vol. viii ; and Brit. Journ .
of Hom ., xxvi, 53.
600 PETROLEUN .

you may know its place in the Materia Medica , though I

cannot tell you how the symptoms were obtained . Dr.
Guernsey gives as characteristics of it— " great sensitiveness
to offensive odours ; imaginary foul smells. Cough with
expectoration in the morning, without expectoration in the
evening. Sensation of extension of size, i.e., patient feels
very large. Collection of water in the mouth. Urine with
greasy cuticle on the surface.” Hahnemann says that it
removes cramp in the stomach , and also in large doses)
causes it. No other therapeutists mention the drug.
We have now a medicine of more importance — the rock -oil,
oleum petræ , or
Petroleum .
We use the white variety, “ mineral naphtha , ” which we
triturate. Dr. Drysdale suggests capsules where the pure
substance should be given.
We owe the symptomatology of Petroleum entirely to
Hahnemann, who gives us 623 symptoms from it in the first
edition of the Chronic Diseases (where he recommends the
18th dilution for use), and 776 in the second .
I have little to say of the pathogenesis there given, except
that one of its symptoms once guided me to the choice of the
right medicine for an anomalous but annoying complaint, riz.
a feeling as if there were a cold stone in the heart. I would
call attention , also, to the urinary symptoms, as presenting a
pretty close resemblance to some forms of vesical catarrh.
The chief reputation of Petroleum in our school has been as
a remedy for sea -sickness. Hempel, who in his first edition
had recommended it, in his second repudiates it as ineffective.
But I must say that both myself and friends whom I have
supplied with it can testify to decided benefit from its use ;
and Dr. Bayes confirms this more favourable estimate of the
remedy. In other forms also of nausea and vomiting, as ir
that of pregnancy , it may prove useful: Dr. Guernsey says
that it has the aversion to fat food characteristic of Pulsa
 PETROSELINUM . 601

tilla . Then there are certain uses of Petroleuni for which I

am indebted to the experience of my friend Dr. Madden, but
which I have frequently verified for myself. These are to
check fætid sweat in the axillæ ; to relieve tenderness of the
feet when these too are bathed in a more or less foul- smelling
moisture ; and to modify that unhealthiness of skin which
causes a general tendency to fester and ulcerate. Teste, more
over, recommends it in alternation with Ipecacuanha in dy
sentery affecting children .. Dr. Drysdale * says that since he
has used it in three -drop doses of the pure substance he has
found it more efficacious than hitherto, getting excellent
results in many chronic catarrhs (urethral, uterine, intestinal,
bronchial), in chilblains and chaps, and in deafness with noises
in the ear.
I commend Petroleum to your study as a medicine whose
virtues have been as yet by no means exhausted .
I have , like Dr. Bayes, found a third decimal alcoholic
attenuation answer every purpose in sea-sickness.
I conclude with a few words about two very minor
medicines.
Petroselinum ,
the common parsley, a tincture of which is made from the
whole fresh plant, appears from its brief pathogenesis (for
which at present I can only refer you to Jabr) to have aa decided
action upon the urethral mucous membrane ; and has been
used accordingly in subacute gonorrhea and gleet. You
might be inclined to doubt the possession of active properties
by this seemingly harmless esculent ; but I may remind you
that parsley seeds and their educt, Apiol, have been found
to affect the brain like quinine, and have been used with
some success as a substitute for it in intermittent fevers and
neuralgiæ .
The water -hemlock,
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 403.
602 PHELLANDRIUM .

Phellandrium aquaticum ,
of which we use the ripe fruit, has a pathogenesis of 373
symptoms in the second volume of Hartlaub and Trinks'
Arzneimittellehre, mostly furnished by Nenning and obtained
in his usual manner. Phellandrium appears to act as a poison
similarly to its congeners Cicuta and Enanthe. It was in
considerable repute of old time for chronic suppurations
occurring in the lungs and elsewhere, but it has fallen into
disuse in the old school, and has found little place in the
new . Dr. Dudgeon, however, has published in the twenty
eighth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy a case
of severe and long-lasting headache cured by it, after the
failure of more ordinary remedies. He states that he has
given it with success in similar headaches since. The charac
teristics are " pain like a heavy weight, a stone, a lump of
lead, on the top of the head, with aching and burning in the
temples and above the eyes ; pain in the eyes, with congestion
of the conjunctiva ; watering of the eyes ; intolerance of light
and sound.” Gross also recommends it for nursing women
when pain is felt in the nipples on each application of the
child .
 LECTURE XXXIV .

PHOSPHORUS .

I HAVE to bring before you to-day one of our greatest poly

chrests—a medicine which will repay the utmost care we may
bestow upon its study,
Phosphorus.
The pharmaceutical preparation of this peculiar substance
is itself a large matter . In the old school, solutions in sul
phuric ether and olive oil have generally been used. Mr.
Ashburton Thompson has recently shown that the latter
vehicle is very objectionable, as allowing of the free oxidation
of the phosphorus, whereby hypophosphorous acid is pro
duced, which is far more irritant than its base. He shows
that all the unexpected poisonings which have deterred phy
sicians from the medicinal use of Phosphorus have arisen from
this preparation . The solution in ether, however, is all that
can be desired. Hahnemann recommended it as an alternative
to trituration ; and the British Homeopathic Society does the
same, pointing out that the vehicle takes up almost exactly
one per cent., thus making our first attenuation .* Subse
quent potencies may be prepared with rectified spirit. Abso
lute alcohol is also mentioned as suitable for the primary
* We have heard lately of a " mother -tincture of Phosphorus. " It is
obvious that there can be no such thing. If chemists are asked for it, they
may save explanation by supplying under this appellation the strongest
solution they have. But it must be understood that this, if etherial, is
really the first attenuation ; if alcoholic, of varying strength according to
the proportion of water in the vehicle, but always below that of the former.
604 PHOSPHORUS .

solution ; but Mr. Thompson states that 320 parts of it are

required for the purpose. He recommends its administration
in glycerine instead of water to avoid decomposition . Another
excellent preparation of phosphorus, according to this writer,
is a solution in cod -liver oil, which takes it up freely, and
does not -- like the vegetable oils - allow of its oxidation .
A pathogenesis of Phosphorus was published by Hab
nemann in the first edition of the Chronic Diseases . It con
tains 1025 symptoms, of which 963 are his own — that is, as
-

we have seen , observed upon patients taking the drug in

infinitesimal doses. Soon after, additional provings from
themselves and three others were published - without expla
nation of their origin - by Hartlaub and Trinks in their
Arzneimittellehre. These, in the second edition of the Chronic
Diseases, were incorporated by Hahnemann with his old and
some new material, making a total of 1915 — the longest list
in the collection , save that of Sulphur. 1169 of these are
his own, 662 from nine collaborateurs, and 84 from authors.
I must leave to your discretion what use you will make of
this pathogenesis. I have already expressed my entire lack
of confidence in the symptoms obtained on the principles
avowed by Hahnemann , and mainly followed by his disciples,
in the Chronic Diseases period . It is otherwise with many
later provings of the school ; and in the case of Phosphorus
we have some excellent ones from Dr. Sorge and eleven asso
ciates. He has published these, with a copious collection of
poisonings, of experiments on men and animals, and of cases
cured by the drug, in his Der Phosphor, ein grosses Heilmittel
( Leipsig , 1862) , the prize -essay of the Central Homeopathic
Society of Germany. For materials of later date I may refer
you to a paper by Dr. Holcombe, “ Phosphorus; a patho
genetic study,” in the seventh volume of the North American
Journal of Homeopathy ; to another, “ On the Action of Phos
phorus upon the Liver," by Dr. Madden and myself, in the
twenty- first volume of the British Journal of Homæopathy;
to Wegner's experiments on animals, translated from Virchow's
 PHOSPHORUS . 605

Archiv in the thirty -first volume of the same Journal ; and to

the treatise on Free Phosphorus in Medicine, by Mr. Ash
burton Thompson ( London, 1874 ), on whose pharmaceutical
portion I have already drawn.
The history of Phosphorus as a medicine has been curious
and interesting. The primary stimulant influence which we
shall see that it possesses, and which it exerts especially upon
the nervous system , was for aa long time all that was known of
its action ; and this property was made use of (often with
success) in typhoid and other adynamic states. But so many
accidents occurred from the large doses and (as we have seen )
unsuitable preparations employed, that the drug became
branded as dangerous, and, until lately, was seldom employed
in the old school. Dierbach and Trousseau and Pidoux omit
it from their works on Materia Medica ; and it does not appear
in Dr. Ringer's until its fourth edition . Its extinguished
flame has recently been rekindled from the homeopathic
territory, where its light had long been burning steadily and
brightly ; and now it bids fair, in the sphere of the nervous
system at any rate, to resume an important place among
remedies.
Hahnemann, though speaking of Phosphorus as a very im-.
portant medicine, was misled by the stimulant properties of
the drug into denying its homeopathic applicability to states
of depression, which he regarded as only secondary re
actions. We shall see that they are its real and lasting
pathogenetic effects. This mistake, and the unsatisfactory
nature of his symptom -list, kept the medicine in the back
ground for some time. But then Fleischmann, Arnold, and
Liedbeck took it up, and showed its power and virtues ; and
pari passu with the advance of knowledge as to its poisonous
effects, its use in our hands as a remedial agent has widened
and extended . For old -school therapeutics it is of no advan
tage to learn that Phosphorus congests the lungs, necroses the
maxillæ , softens the nervous centres, liquefies the blood, and
causes fatty degeneration throughout the body. But to us
606 PHOSPHORUS .

such knowledge is fruitful of practical results ; and has already

raised the drug into the first rank of our medicines.
1. Before, however, we dwell upon these phenomena, let us
speak of the stimulant properties of Phosphorus. This sub
stance is one of those which enter into the normal composi
tion of the body. It exists mainly in the nervous centres, in
the form of a peculiar compound with fatty matter which has
been named “ protagon ; " just as iron is united with hæmatin
in the blood. It actually forms more than one per cent. of
the human brain, the amount gradually increasing from in
fancy to adult age, and then again decreasing in old age.
Now the analogy of iron and lime suggests that, up to a
certain point, Phosphorus may be a special stimulant to the
tissue it goes to constitute ; and, the stimulation being in
some sort that of a food, it need not be followed by reactive
depression.
That Phosphorus has such an action on the nervous system
-as iron on the blood and (probably) lime on the bones — is
beyond doubt. “About the second hour," writes Mr. Thomp
son , “ after a dose of the twentieth or the twelfth of a grain,
sensations of exhilaration begin to make themselves felt.
The capacity for exertion, both mental and physical, is in
creased , and that condition which the French describe as one
of bien -être is experienced . If the subject have taken the
dose while in a state of fatigue, he finds his strength renewed ;
if while in a state of despondency, he takes a more cheerful
view of things. The pulse becomes firmer and a little more
frequent. These effects pass off gradually in the course of a
few hours, and a state of depression does not ensue. ” With
this there is often increase of temperature, perspiration and
diuresis, and sometimes venereal excitement.
It is this action of Phosphorus which made it available,
given in full and frequent doses, in typhoid depression, and
often rallied a patient from an apparently hopeless condition.
It is aa property of the drug which we may well employ, under
standing clearly what it is -- that we are giving it as we gire
 PHOSPHORUS . 607

alcoholic stimulants, and not as a medicine. After the same

fashion it may be used, if it is needed, instead of a glass of
wine for temporary nervous exhaustion ; remembering, how
ever, that rest and food - if there is time for them-are far
better remedies. But there is another application of the
stimulant power of Phosphorus which has of late attracted
much attention, viz . the relief and even cure of neuralgia ob
tained therefrom. Phosphorus causes and cures in minute
doses its own form of neuralgia ; but this is rarely met with
in comparison with that which requires Arsenicum, Belladonna,
Colocynth , and Sulphur. The drug has hence occupied 10
prominent place in homeopathic therapeutics as an anti
neuralgic remedym ; but we have known how to use it when
required. A cure of the intercostal form , wrought by one of
us with it after long-continued unsuccessful treatment by an
old -school practitioner, called the attention of the latter to the
remedy ; and he and others tested it in various instances of
the affection , and reported favourably of their results. It is
here that Mr. Ashburton Thompson came upon the field . He
treated some fifty cases with the medicine, with a success
which leads him to regard it as an almost infallible remedy
for pure neuralgia, wherever occurring, and as rapid in its
action as it is lasting. But to obtain such result, he says, the
medicine must be given in a full, i.e. a stimulant dose, not
less indeed than a twelfth of a grain every four hours . Thus
its modus operandi seems to be that of food and wine, whose
influence over neuralgic pain is so well known : only that its
relation to nervous tissue gives it stimulant and perhaps
nutrient qualities of a special kind. I think that medicine is
much indebted to Mr. Thompson for working out this subject,
as well as for his valuable contributions to the pharmacy and
posology of the drug. We have, in most cases, remedies for
neuralgia of more satisfactory kind ; but were we at a non
plus, we might do worse than follow his practice.
But it is with Phosphorus as a neurotic as with Iron as an
hæmatic : if too long continued, or taken in excess, it acts as
608 PHOSPHORUS .

a poison to the very tissues which it stimulates and feeds.

Iron can in this way impoverish the blood, causing anæmia ;
and Phosphorus still more surely impairs the vitality of the
nervous centres, and gives rise to paralysis. Even in acute
poisoning there are often symptoms of nervous depression, as
in the third case of Dr. Holcombe's series ; and among those
given by Dr. Hempel, in one there was numbness of the
extremities, with formication - the fingers having so little
sensibility that they could not pick up a pin , and in another
there was amaurosis with widely -dilated pupils, and deafness.
In an excellent study of “ Phosphoric Paralysis, " by Dr. Galla
vardin of Lyons, translated from L'Art Médical in the twen .
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy, two cases
tieth
are given, in one of which the left arm, in the other the hands,
became powerless. But the most striking instance of the
kind presented by him is one in which, life being prolonged,
there was progressive paralysis. It is cited from Huss's
Chronic Alcoholism , as follows :
“ A man, æt. 39, who led an ordinary kind of life, occupied
himself for three years in the preparation of phosphoric
matches. He used to work in the room where he lived, and
there he kept the materials and the product of his trade. He
had suffered no inconvenience from it until a year ago, when
a great quantity of Phosphorus and of phosphorated matches
took fire, after a violent explosion . At the time, whilst try.
ing to extinguish the conflagration , he so thoroughly respired
the vapour of Phosphorus, that at last he fainted from suffo
cation. Immediately after this he experienced a sensation of
weakness in the back , as if he were ready to sink ; then weak.
ness in the extremities, and trembling at every effort ; creep
ing under the skin, and a sensation as if something were
starting under the epidermis. At first, great sexual excite
ment, which afterwards diminished, and for the last six
months gave place to impotence, with absolute impossibility
of erection .
" Independent of that, he found himself well, with good
 PHOSPHORUS , 609

appetite ; regular evacuations ; good health ; normal re

spiration. Nothing indicated any affection of the brain .
On his admission to the hospital, the following symptoms
were remarked : his two legs were so weak that he could
only walk a few steps, and even that he did with a tottering
gait, and as if he were not sure of himself ; if he tried to
stand upright, his legs trembled and his knees bent; his
hands and arms trembled on making an effort. In the
state of repose, the muscles started out all over the body,
especially in the extremities. They seemed to be twitching
to and fro, though painlessly ; different muscles or bundles of
muscles twitched at different periods. At times the twitching
stopped, but it was easily excited by contact. On the left arm , a
constant feeling of formication under the skin ; normal sensa
tion over the general surface of the body. The spine not
sensitive, nor painful, but so weak that the patient cannot
straighten himself, nor remain standing when once straight
ened . The faculties, both intellectual and moral, the func
tions of the heart , of the chest, and of the digestive organs,
normal; but the pronunciation embarrassed (? paralysis of
the tongue). The patient lived three or four years in the
full enjoyment of his senses, whilst the paralysis increased
and extended ; but all the attempts at treatment were
unavailing."
Dr. Gallavardin also mentions the experiments on animals
of Mayer. The conclusions of this observer are— “ Phos
phorus acts specifically on the nerves of voluntary motion ,
and on the muscles themselves. It impedes, diminishes, and
at last entirely destroys the power of movement, or rather it
destroys the irritability of the motor nerves, and the contrac
tility of the muscular fibres, and at last completely paralyses.
the powers." He adds that it also “ acts specifically on
the nerves of sensation , destroying sensibility from the peri
phery to the brain , the sensorium being in small degree
disturbed ."
To all this corresponds the condition of the nervous centres.
610 PHOSPHORUS .

commonly found in the animals poisoned by it, as you may

read in Sorge's treatise. This is nearly always described as
“pale, soft, and bloodless."
It follows that Phosphorus is truly homeopathic to para
lytic conditions, when dependent on lowered vitality or even
softening of the centres ; and should be a valuable remedy
therein. Dr. Gallavardin cites thirteen cases of the kind,
twelve from allopathic, and one from homeopathic sources.
Dr. Trinks has recorded another, described with his wonted
fulness and accuracy, which may be found in the nineteenth
volume of the British Journal ; and Sorge and Mr. Thompson
give some more. They were nearly all of a “ functional ”
nature — from amenorrhea, seminal losses, exhaustion from
acute disease, and such-like causes. In one case the loss of
power involved only the third, in another only the sixth pair
In softening of the brain from exhaustion
of cranial nerves .
Phosphorus seems acquiring quite a reputation in the old
school ; but it has long been in use for it among homæo
pathists. The muscular symptoms of the case I have nar
rated suggest the “ fibrillary contractions” of “ wasting palsy,"
the “progressive muscular paralysis” of Duchenne. With
Phosphorus, indeed, we should not expect wasting of the
muscles, but simply their fatty degeneration ; and a form of
the disease has been described by Duchenne which he calls
"pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis,” in which this very condition
obtains. In a little treatise, On the various forms of Paralysis,
which I published some years ago, I suggested Phosphorus
for this malady ; and Mr. Clifton tells me that he bas obtained
striking benefit from its persevering administration in the
third decimal dilution , in a well -marked instance of it. The
girl, who could not walk six yards when she came to him , can
now, after a twelvemonth's treatment, accomplish her four
miles with little difficulty .
It is customary in the old school to speak of Phosphorus
as a “ tonic" in these cases. I have shown that, like other
tonics, it weakens in health where it strengthens in disease.
 PHOSPHORUS . 611

It is more plausible to argue that, like iron in anæmia , it acts

as a food . It may do so under some circumstances . But I
think that the evidence of dosage, which favours the hypo
thesis in the other case, is against it here. Jahr is as lau
datory of his decillionths as Thompson of his hundredths of a
grain in cerebral softening ; and even the latter doses would
not do much to feed an organ which naturally contains some
three quarters of an ounce of the substance. So I think we
must conclude that it acts dynamically and homeopathically
here, and is entitled to our highest consideration .
II. I will take next the symptoms produced by Phosphorus
in the male sexual organs, as these are probably a part of its
influence on the nervous system generally. They are, how
ever, of sufficient importance to merit special and distinct con
sideration .
The sexual organs share in the general excitement caused by
moderate doses of Phosphorus ; but they manifest its influ .
ence in so marked a manner as to evidence a special action of
the drug upon them, or upon that part of the nervous centre
whence they derive their energy. That Phosphorus is an
aphrodisiac has been known for a long time. It has displayed
this property in aa most unmistakable manner among the lower
animals. Leroy (quoted by Pereira ) ascertained that it was
aphrodisiac to drakes. In Dr. Sorge's experiments cocks,
pigeons, dogs, and frogs were affected in the same way ; the
latter got those large growths on their fore feet that appear
during their pairing season, and used them accordingly. But
the same prover's experiments on the human subject show
that this excitement is but temporary, and is followed by a
>

much longer -continued depression, as we see in Dr. Gallavar

din's case just cited, showing itself in absence of desire, im
perfect erections, with too rapid ejaculatio seminis, and fre
quent involuntary emissions.
Phosphorus is thus aa thoroughly homeopathic remedy for
that irritable weakness of the male sexual organs which is left
behind by excesses in venery and by masturbation. Experi
612 PHOSPHORUS .

ence has over and over again confirmed the indications of

theory in this matter. Phosphorus would also in very small
doses) be homeopathic to satyriasis, which corresponds to its
primary effects; for this Jahr recommends it from experience.
Might it also be desirable to use it occasionally as a special
stimulant, in full doses, as in impotentia senilis when off.
spring is much desired ? The following observation from Dr.
Sorge's collection shows that great caution must be exercised
here : — “ An old dog who had long lost his sexual power , after
taking phosphorus rat-poison that was given to kill him , be
came sexually excited, and died in the act of coitus."
III. I would now direct your attention to the well -known
action of Phosphorus upon the jaws, as mainly seen in the
workers in lucifer -match manufactories. The fullest re
searches instituted on this subject are those of Drs. von Bibra
and Geist, of which, if you have not access to the original,
>

you may read a full account in the eleventh volume of the

British Journal of Homoeopathy. The disease usually begins
in a carious tooth , which gnaws and throbs, and sometimes
shoots, with itching and bleeding of the neighbouring gum .
Then gum -boils form , and discharge foetid pus in which are
found granules of bone. Then the teeth fall out, and the
gums recede or melt away, and the bone appears in a state of
caries or necrosis. Inflammation of the neighbouring parts
and irritative fever are present : and the case often terminates
in death . It is a moot point whether this effect of Phos
phorus is produced by a local and chemical action on the
parts, or whether it is a result of the dynamic influence of the
poison. In favour of the latter being the true interpretation
is a case of poisoning by Phosphorus recorded by Dr. J. O.
Müller, on the fourteenth day of which there came on painful
boring burning pains in the bones, especially in the teeth, the
jaws, and the nose.* These were removed by Mezereum , a
drug which has cured the maxillary caries of the workers in
Phosphorus.
* North Amer . Journ . of Hom ., vii, 467.
 PHOSPHORUS . 613

This conclusion has been thought to be impugned by the

recent experiments of Dr. Wegner ; but I am unable to draw
such aa conclusion from them. He finds that if rabbits are
kept for some time in an atmosphere impregnated with the
fumes of Phosphorus, in a small minority only does there
appear periostitis and necrosis of the jaws, just as the same
thing occurs in but a few of the workers in it. He fairly
argues that there must be some personal causal condition in
each individual case, in addition to the general influence to
which all are exposed alike; but I cannot follow him in his
further assumption that this condition must be a local
exposure of the periosteum from dental caries or injury to
the gum . For he admits that in one only of his suffering
rabbits could he find any such lesion ; and that carious teeth
are not always discoverable in the affected workers. Instead ,
therefore, of laying stress on the fewness of those exposed to
the Phosphorus vapours whose jaws are affected without local
access for the irritant, the fact that any are so affected
should indicate that the influence is not local but constitu
tional.
Still more striking evidence to this effect is derived from the
results obtained by Dr. Wegner from feeding the same class
of animals with long-continued minute doses of Phosphorus
from one to three milligrammes according to one calculation,
from the four -hundredth to the hundredth of a grain according
to another, daily . Here an influence is produced upon the
osteogenetic tissue (of which periosteum is the chief repre
sentative) all over the body, which leads to increased pro
duction of osseous matter, to thickening of the spongy and
greater density of the compact substance of the long and
short bones, and even in some instances to the obliteration
of the medullary cavity by the continuous fresh formation.
Dr. Wegner himself cannot but see the analogy of all this
with the effects on the jaws produced by the fumes.
Phosphorus,” he sums up, “ in minute doses in all pro
bability is dissolved in the blood, and , circulating with it,
40
614 PHOSPHORUS .

operates on the osteogenetic tissue as a specific plastic

irritant. Brought topically in the form of vapour into
contact with denuded periosteum , in moderate concentration
it provokes ossifying periostitis : while, if the fumes operate
very energetically, the irritation becomes so intense that
suppuration is added to the ossificatory process." I should
have said that in the maxillary disease of the workmen and
the rabbits there is always a combination of new osseous
deposits with the necrosis of the old bone.
The results obtained by these small internal doses thus throw
much light on the nature of the osseous affection induced by
exposure to phosphoric vapours ; but they are also of much
importance in themselves. Dr. Wood represents them as if
they evidenced a stimulant influence on the nutrition of the
tissue. I cannot so read them ; nor does Dr. Wegner really
regard them in this light. He connects them with alterations
he finds the drug, when given in the same way, to produce in
the stomach and liver -- alterations which, as we shall see, are
essentially of a morbid kind. “ Older observations," he
writes, “ have taught that Phosphorus in large doses influences
certain tissues, particularly the parenchymatous elements of
the liver, of the kidneys, of the stomach , and of the muscles,
>

as an extraordinarily intense per -acute irritation, of such a

violent nature that in a very short space of time a fatty
degeneration, a necro- biosis of the same, follows. We have
now seen that the same substance, given to the organism in a
smaller quantity, while leaving the first-named parts perfectly
immune, possesses an irritative influence on totally different
kinds of tissue, on the osteogenetic substance, on the
interstitial tissue of the liver and of the stomach ; an irritative
influence which has not a degenerative, but essentially a
formative tendency .”
From the traditional point of view, the natural applica.
tion of this power of Phosphorus would be to further
bone-production in cases where it was defective, as in osteo
malacia and rachitis, or where it was needed in temporary
 PHOSPHORUS . 615

excess , as in fractures, intra -periosteal resections, and trans

plantations of this membrane. In the latter field Dr. Wegner
has no doubt of its beneficial operation ; and within certain
limits the process is a physiological one. In osteo -malacia
and rachitis he can report no decided results ; and indeed
in both the condition is too complex for help to be expected
from simple increase in osteogenetic activity. He makes a
remark, however, regarding the latter disease which is very
suggestive to us. “ Under the simultaneous influence ,” he
says,, “ of feeding with phosphorus, and of the deprivation
of the inorganic substances, especially of lime, the mode of
growth of bones is altered so as exactly to correspond to
what we are accustomed to call rachitis .” He then describes
the result of such an experiment, ending— “ The conditions
under which this artificial rachitis arises are a not unwelcome
confirmation of the theory which an exact observation of the
process has already set up, viz . that rachitis is conditioned
by two factors ; first, an insufficient quantity of inorganic
salts in the blood , either from insufficient ingestion of the
same, or from their excessive elimination ; secondly, a
constitutional irritation influencing the osteogenetic tissue."
For us of course the inference is that we should use
Phosphorus as a medicinal agent here ; and indeed Phosphoric
acid already holds a high place in the homeopathic thera
peutics of the disease. Other applications in this direction
of the osseous influence of Phosphorus are obvious. Kafka
reports it to be a most efficacious medicine, in conjunction
with Natrum muriaticum , in interstitial disease of the
vertebræ and of the cancellous structure of bones in general .
I was myself led to its use in cases where the irritation of
a carious tooth was causing frequent gum boils and incipient
disease of the maxilla , and where for some reason or other
we were debarred from extraction of the offending member.
Here I have found it most efficacious. Dr. Bayes, also, praises
it highly in many affections of the teeth and gums. I may
mention that gingivitis, with looseness of the teeth , has been
616 PHOSPHORUS.

observed, not only in acute poisoning by Phosphorus, where

it might be secondary to blood -changes, but from its medicinal
use .

IV . I have yet to speak of the action of Phosphorus in

other regions. Let us consider, first, what it does in the
alimentary canal and in the respiratory organs.
1. Phosphorus, in its unaltered state, is not aa local irritant.
It does not set up gastro -enteritis as the corrosive poisons do,
unless (as I have said) it becomes oxidized in the stomach ,
and hypophosphorous acid is formed . But, however it is
introduced into the system , it is liable to set up what Virchow
calls a gastro-adenitis, a swelling and shedding of the
epithelial cells of the mucous membrane like that we have
seen occasionally induced by Arsenic, and like that which
obtains in cholera . The same process goes on in the intestines,
and is accompanied there by diarrhæa, as in the stomach by
vomiting. This is its acute action . But, when gradually
ingested by rabbits, Wegner finds it to set up an irritation of
the interstitial connective tissue of the stomach , causing a
“chronic indurative gastritis, with thickening, analogous to
cirrhosis of the liver." From one or other of these processes
may occur the condition described by Taylor : — " chronic
poisoning by the drug is accompanied by cardialgia , frequent
vomiting , sense of heat in the stomach , diarrhæa, tenesmus,
pains in the joints , marasmus, hectic fever, and disease of the
stomach , under which the patient may slowly sink.”
These facts should, I think, receive more homeopathic
application than has yet been accorded to them . Chronic
degeneration of the mucous membrane of the stomach may
find in Phosphorus a potent remedy ; the case recorded by Dr.
Bolle,** and supposed to be of gastric cancer, may well have
been of this kind. Phosphorus has a fair repute in Germany
in chronic dyspepsia characterised by sour risings, heat at the
epigastrium , flatulence, and canine hunger, of which several
instances of relief by it are given by Sorge. Hahnemann
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xii, 173.
 PITOSPHORUS . 617

himself mentions chronic diarrhea, with soft and thin stools,

as a special indication for it ; it is of most service when this
malady affects nervous subjects and delicate children . Mr.
Proctor found it very useful in cholera, to check the drain of
brownish fluid from the bowels which sometimes continued
after the other symptoms had subsided. * But, next to the
stomach, Phosphorus seems to act most powerfully upon the
rectum. I have great confidence in it in chronic disease of
this part of the bowel . In one case I had under treatment a
discharge of blood and pus, with tenesmus, had been going on
for eighteen months before 1 saw the patient. Phosphorus
30 effected speedy improvement, and in less than two months
entire disappearance of her symptoms; and she finished by
taking Saccharum lactis for another month without any recur
rence of her troubles. In another patient, the symptoms for
which he consulted me were those of incipient stricture of the
rectum , the faces having already become flattened . There
was concomitant mucous discharge, and inquiry ascertained
that there had been an attack of acute proctitis about nine
months previously. Phosphorus 30 was curative here also,
all difficulty in defæcation and abnormal shape of fæces soon
disappearing, and the discharge ceasing. An old -standing
urethral stricture was simultaneously much improved .
2. On the respiratory organs Phosphorus acts as a pure
irritant. I would not lay too much stress on the bronchitis,
emphysema, pneumonia , and pulmonary phthisis observed in
the workmen and rabbits exposed to its fumes, as these may
be but local effects. They are accompanied, however, with the
weakness, emaciation, and hectic which characterise the gastro
>

intestinal effects of the drug. But Magendie and others have

found hepatization of the lungs in animals poisoned by it ;
and the provers experienced decided symptoms of laryngo
tracheal and bronchial irritation, and of pulmonary conges
tion. For the last I may refer you to Dr. Holcombe's tho
rough proving on himself. Its presence was evidenced by
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxv, 95.
618 PHOSPHORUS .

great heat and oppression at the chest, obliging frequent deep

inspiration.
Correspondingly, Phosphorus occupies a high place in the
homeopathic therapeutics of respiratory affections, as you
heard lately from Dr. Hale in this place. Pneumonia was the
disease in which it won its spurs. First introduced by Dr.
Fleischmann , of Vienna , his great success with it has led to
its general use throughout the homeopathic body. Dr. Cl.
Müller and Dr. Bähr have given indications for the preference
of Phosphorus to Tartar emetic in this disease. They concur
in recommending it especially when pneumonia threatens to
deviate from its normal course, and when " nervous” (i. e.
typhoid ) symptoms appear. Dr, Bähr thinks it also the
prime remedy in oedema pulmonum . I am myself disposed
to prefer it to any other medicine in all the stages of pneu
monia simplex and in the pneumonia of typhus. Bryonia is
probably superior in pleuro -pneumonia ; and in broncho
pneumonia Tartar emetic contends with it for precedence,
though in this malady occurring in children Phosphorus has
always given me the utmost satisfaction . In fact, in these
subjects bronchitis is so apt to run on into pneumonia that I
always employ Phosphorus, after Aconite, in its treatment, in
preference to any other bronchial medicine.
A word here about the use of Phosphorus in pulmonary
phthisis. It is of great service in many ways in this disease.
It keeps down the hyperæmia of the lungs, quiets the cough,
and often moderates the diarrhæa. It may thus be actually
curative in severe scrofulous pneumonia. I am unable, how
ever, to credit it with any power of modifying the true tuber
cular dyscrasia. Neither our small doses of the pure sub
stance, nor Dr. Churchill's large quantities of the hypophos
phites, show any real power of checking the deposit of fresh
tubercle.
V. In nearly all the cases of poisoning by Phosphorus
which have been recorded during the last twenty years, while
symptoms of general irritation have not been absent, another
 PHOSPHORUS . 619

and a very different group of phenomena arrests our atten

tion . The patient appears to be suffering from what used to
be called “ malignant jaundice.” The skin and conjunctiva
assume a more or less yellow tint, and the stools are light ;
but with this there is a general typhoid prostration which is
absent from ordinary jaundice. Petechiæ and hæmorrhages
occur in various parts of the body. The urine is scanty, high
coloured, and loaded with albumen . Cerebral symptoms ,
delirium , convulsions, &c., somewhat like those of uræmia
supervene, and the patient dies in a few days in a state of
coina . At the post -mortem investigation nothing is disco
vered in the brain save a little fulness . But the blood is found
in a state of complete fluidity, non-coagulable, and with very
few corpuscles, while ecchymoses and sanguineous effusions
appear everywhere. The liver, which during life had been
enlarged and tender, presents profound alterations of struc .
ture. It varies in size ; but fatty degeneration is found to
have taken place in its secreting structure. The acini are
sometimes found filled with fat, even to bursting ; but more
commonly they are wholly destroyed , and oil and fat- globules
fill their place. The secreting structure of the kidneys also
is found to be undergoing fatty degeneration , and the ducts
are sometimes filled with exudation matter . When the ex
amination has been carried farther, this fatty degeneration is
found to have involved other parts of the body , notably the
heart and the muscles generally . Numerous experiments on
animals have verified these observations, and have put it be
yond doubt that these remarkable changes of tissue are really
producible by Phosphorus in the space of a few days, or even
sooner .

In the paper by Dr. Madden and myself in the British

Journal, which I have already mentioned, you will find a
detailed account of these remarkable phenomena . *
* To the references there given the following are a few more : Brit.
Journ . of Hom ., xxi, 460 ; xxiii, 128, 280 ; xxv, 520 ; United States Med .
and Surg. Journal, ii, 274.
6:20 PHOSPHORUS .

What is their rationale ? I would answer, in the first place,

that the fundamental lesion is an acute fatty degeneration,
which Phosphorus has the power of causing in every part of
the body susceptible thereof. In the second place, I would
refer the neurotic and hæmatic phenomena to the suspension
of the functions of the liver and kidneys, owing to the meta.
morphosis of their secreting cells. I attach most importance
to the affection of the liver. Although the cerebral sym .
ptoms resemble those of uræmia so far that they suggest the
retention of a similarly hurtful excretion in the blood, they
could hardly be mistaken for them . Combined with the
petechiæ and hæmorrhages, they present a morbid condition
only present elsewhere in what Frerichs calls “ acholia ,” i.e. a
suspension of the functions of the liver, owing to a destruction
of its secreting cells. The most prominent instance of this
lesion is acute atrophy of the liver ; but it also occurs occa
sionally in the course of cirrhosis, obstructive jaundice, and
other chronic hepatic affections. The symptoms are those of
blood -poisoning, to which the nervous phenomena are probably
secondary. I do not want to wander too far into pathology;
but I must call your attention to the very interesting specu
lations on the subject of Dr. Austin Flint, of New York.
His theory is that cholesterine is the excrementitious material
of the bile as urea is of the urine, and that the blood
poisoning of acholia is accordingly a cholesteræmia . But I
must proceed to inquire into the therapeutic bearing of these
curious facts.
1. Phosphorus unquestionably deserves the fullest trial in
every case of malignant jaundice. In the great majority of
these cases the pathological condition is acute atrophy of the
liver. Now all observers, including Frerichs himself, are
struck with the resemblance of phosphoric poisoning to this
disease. I was myself at first inclined to question the identity
of the two, seeing that in acute atrophy the fatty change of
the secreting cells is by no means a prominent feature. But
it is sufficiently marked to lead three pathologists (Engel,
 PHOSPHORUS . 021

Wedl, and Bamberger) to explain the destruction of the cells

by a fatty degeneration arising from an acute exudation pro
cess . And while in acute phosphoric poisoning the liver is
felt to be enlarged (probably from hyperæmia) , Lebert and
Wyss have ascertained that in slower poisoning animals have
their livers very much diminished in size, and in a state
which cannot be anatomically distinguished from that of acute
yellow atrophy. A case, moreover , has recently occurred in
a London hospital which was diagnosed during life as acute
atrophy, but in which, after death , " the entire disappearance
of the true hepatic secreting structure and its conversion into
oily and fatty matter rendered it a remarkable case, justifying
the term acute fatty degeneration .” I think, therefore, that
we may with confidence combat this nearly always fatal
disease with our Phosphorus.
2. Dr. Holcombe, who was the first to call our attention to
these pathogenetic effects of Phosphorus, suggested its use
where jaundice complicates toxæmic disorders, and notably in
yellow fever. More recently Dr. Ozanam , of Paris, seeing a
case of this form of phosphoric poisoning in which to the
other symptoms black vomit was added, is forcibly struck by
the resemblance of the phenomena to those of the typhus
icterodes. I feel a difficulty in acceding to these views,
because, according to Frerichs, there is not in yellow fever (or
in jaundice accompanying typhus and pyæmia) any destruction
of the hepatic cells, but rather, if anything, polycholia. I should
prefer Crotalus and the serpent poisons for such jaundice,
which seems to me of different origin.
3. In Phosphorus we evidently have a homæopathic remedy
for that important pathological change known as fatty degene
ration , wherever occurring. I need hardly enlarge upon the
picture thus opened to us of the applicability of our medicine .
It is most obvious when this morbid process attacks the liver
or the heart. Dr. Bayes speaks from experience of its value
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 166 ; and also the case in vol. xxviii,
p. 409 .
622 PHOSPHORUS .

in chronic cases of the former malady ; and I have seen

undoubted evidence of its power of arresting the progress of
the disease in the cardiac substance. Acute fatty degeneration
of the heart is apt to occur in typhus; and here Phosphorus
must be remembered . I would also remind you that the
same process is thought by many to constitute atheroma of
the arteries and mollities ossium ; to be an occasional cause
of softening of the brain and cord ; and, occurring in the
bronchial tubes, to predispose to emphysema.
4. Before leaving the liver, we must take away the thought
that Phosphorus has a very specific action upon it as an organ ,
and may often be found curative in its diseases . The disorder
we have seen set up in it is a diffuse inflammation — as dis
tinguished from the circumscribed hepatitis of tropical
countries which is so liable to go on to abscess. But
Dr. Wegner finds it capable of causing, when gradually
administered, an interstitial hepatitis also, in which the organ
is hard, enlarged at first but subsequently atrophied, and
then often presenting the typical granular form , the classical
cirrhosis of the liver. With all this there is chronic icterus ;
and in the latter event there occur the secondary disturb
ances so well known in human pathology - ascites and so
forth .
For both these forms of hepatic disease Phosphorus may
prove serviceable . It should also be borne in mind for jaun.
dice, not only when complicating such graver maladies , but
when occurring to all appearance idiopathically. It has been
found capable of setting up the catarrhal inflammation of the
bile-ducts which is so frequently the cause of this disorder.
In jaundice from nervous excitement, moreover, it may be
the best medicine to give, as this is every now and then (espe.
cially in pregnant women ) the beginning of an acute atrophy
of the liver.
5. We have yet remaining the renal and hæmatic symptoms
of this form of phosphoric poisoning. It may be thought that
the affection of the kidneys is secondary to that of the liver,
 PHOSPHORUS . 623

as in two of Frerichs' best- described cases of acute atrophy

fatty degeneration was discovered in their glandular cells. I
must mention, however, that there is one case on record in
which there was no jaundice or cerebral disturbance during
life, although the liver was found (post-mortem ) enlarged and
fatty. In this case the urine during life was highly coloured
and frothy, its specific gravity increased, and it contained
albumen and exudation cells. After death , the cortical sub
stance of the kidneys was granular ; the Malpighian cor
puscles resembled red points ; and on a microscopical exami
nation the uriniferous tubuli were found blocked up by exu
dation matter . While I agree with Dr. Hempel that this is.
not Bright's disease, it is nevertheless a very decided nephritis ;
and warrants the expectation that Phosphorus may find a
place in the treatment of the idiopathic affection . It should
also obviously be given in primary fatty degeneration of the
kidneys. The indication for it here is strengthened by the fact
that in one of Dr. G. Johnson's cases this affection (which
came on in three weeks' time) appeared to be the immediate
result of sexual excess.
Yet more difficult is the question whether the dissolution
of the blood induced by Phosphorus is the result of a direct
hæmatic influence, or is secondary to the affection of the liver,
in whose idiopathic form it is a constant phenomenon . The
latter seems, from physiological evidence, to be the true alterna
tive, as I can find no record of one set of symptoms occurring
without the other. Nevertheless, there are certain thera
peutic results which point in the other direction. I would not
lay too much stress on the cure of purpura reported in the
American Homoeopathic Review , * though it reads well enough .
But the symptom in Hahnemann's pathogenesis, “ small
wounds bleed freely,” which led to the choice of Phosphorus
in this case, has also conducted to very valuable and unexpected
results in no less a disease than fungus hæmatodes.
The first to report success with it was Dr. Constantine
* Vol. v, p. 566.
624 PHOSPHORUS .

Hering, his patient being a negro in Surinam . * Then the

editor of the United States Medical and Surgical Journalt pub
lished a case under the title “ What was it ? ” in which a vascu
lar bleeding fungus on the thigh , the seat of darting pain, got
rapidly well under Phosphorus 30. This narrative led me to
give the medicine in the following case, which has already
been reported in the British Journal of Homeopathy.
Miss W. , æt. 26, consulted me on May 23rd, 1870, telling the following
story. Five years ago she noticed aa small lump in the right breast. She
showed it to a physician, but he told her not to be troubled about it.
She thought no more of it till last winter, when it began to enlarge, and
to be the seat of darting pains. Then a hole formed in the skin , through
which matter discharged ; and last a flat sore formed at the seat of thelump.
This was the condition of things when she came to me. I found a sore ,
not much depressed and not unhealthy-looking, near the nipple. The
latter was not retracted , and there was no hardness at the base of the
sore .
The health was good ; and the only trouble complained of was the
soreness and occasional pain at the seat of ulceration. I prescribed (I
hardly know why) Phosphorus 6, a drop night and morning ; and Calendula
Jotion to the sore.
Miss W. came again on June 3rd, and, on displaying the breast, showed
me to my borror a large bleeding fungus, which had sprouted from the
sore during the ten days since I first saw her. It bled freely when dressed ,
and was the seat of frequent and severe darting pain. I now gave a drop
of the 30th dilution every alternate night, and ordered the growth to be
dressed with dry lint, and to be kept cool ; pressure also was to be made
upon it by means of a bandage.
June 10th . — The fungus has not increased since last week ; and there is
little pain now, and less bleeding than before. Continue.
June 18tli .—No increase in size ; the pain quite gone, and the bleeding
-only occasional. Continue.
June 25th . — Bleedivg quite ceased ; and the fungus, which was dark
red at first, is now pale, and is suppurating. Continue.
So matters stood till August 4th ; when , the size of the growth remain
ing unaltered, I thought I would try whether Thuja would help, and pre
scribed it in the 30th dilution . On August 9th Miss W. came again,
saying that she feared the growth was increasing. It was certainly looking
* See Archiv , Bd. ix, H. 3, S. 153 .
+ See Brit. Journ, of Hom ., xxvi, 658.
 PHOSPHORUS . 6:25

larger, and I found on one side of it a fresh red mass, which had evidently
sprung from the root of the fungus, and was pushing the old and deadened
portion up from beneath. There had also been an outburst of bleeding
As may be supposed, I returned to the Phosphorus 30, giving a dose every
evening.
August 31st.-- Miss W. has been taking the Phosphorus until now . The
progress of the disease has again been checked ; there is no pain or bleed
ing ; her general health is excellent ; and the axillary glands are unaffected .
September 24th. — There being still no diminution of size, I now once
more resorted to Thuja 30, this time taking the precaution of giving the
Phosphorus with it on alternate days.
On October 19th my patient exhibited the good effects of this proceed .
ing. I found the fungus becoming detached at its root, and hanging
only by the slenderest of pedicles. I directed her to continue the medi.
cines, and to give the growth one daily twist upop itself until it should
fall off, when she was to bring it to me. I designed to send it to some
competent microscopist, that the question of its malignancy might be set
at rest .
But I was disappointed ; though my patient was not. On November
8th she returned to tell me that about a week after her last twist there
had been a gush of blood from the breast, after which the fungus bad
rapidly withered away, and in a few days had disappeared. There was
now nothing to be seen at its site but aа small cicatrised sore.
I continued the medicines for a short time longer, and then left them
off. I have seen or heard from her several times since ; and there bas
been no recurrence of the trouble.

That this growth was a “ fungus hæmatodes " there can be

no doubt, or there is nothing in the etymology of the phrase.
But whether fungus bæmatodes is always soft cancer is another
question ; though , if it be not, I know not what it is . I had
hoped to have had an undoubted instance of that disease to
report, as cured by Phosphorus. The growth sprang from the
caruncula lachrymalis, and had completely covered and closed
the eye. It was not very painful, but bled profusely. Under
Phosphorus 30, a dose every other day, it diminished to less
than half its size, and made vision again possible on that side.
But the patient, a woman over sixty, showed coincident sym
ptoms of break-up of constitution, and finally died hemiplegic
and dropsical. I would not therefore lay too much stress
626 PHOSPHORUS.

upon the action of the medicine here ; but in the case cited
it was unquestioned. The help rendered by the Thuja also
seems palpable.
Dr. Broadbent has published a case of essential anæmia
cured by our medicine.
There is one curious use of Phosphorus which does not fall
within any of the above categories. It is its power of curing
chronic mastitis, where sinuses have been left in the gland
after extensive suppuration. There are several cases on record
illustrating this power of the medicine. Bryonia has the same
exceptional action on the mammæ. Has local affinity, I
wonder, anything to do with it, both being such important
chest medicines ?
Phosphorus is so unique a drug that I cannot name a single
genuine analogue to it.
As for dose ::-in the acute affections of the respiratory
organs for which Phosphorus is so frequently required, I find
the second and third dilutions answer every purpose. The
first has been most used in paralysis, and I should not be dis
posed to go higher in malignant jaundice. The higher poten
cies have acted well in sexual irritability, and in chronic
affections of the respiratory organs, alimentary canal, and
mamma .
 LECTURE XXXV.

PHYSOSTIGMA , PHYTOLACCA , PLATINA , PLUMBUM .

My first medicine to -day is a substance just emerging out

of physiological into therapeutical interest, the ordeal bean of
Old Calabar, the seed of the plant called
Physostigma venenosum.
It is not yet officinal ; but triturations of the whole bean seem
the most suitable and active preparation.
A large collection of provings of Physostigma was presented
to the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1874 by Dr.
T. F. Allen, and published in its Transactions for that year.
Besides all recorded experiments on the human subject made
in the old school, it contains provings from homeopathic
sources of a very extensive character. Forty -four persons took
part in them, using the triturations from the first to the
thirtieth. The full record of their trials is given by Dr. Allen ;
and he prefixes to his collection a very useful catalogue of the
bibliography of the drug. The experiments which have been
made with it on animals-chiefly by Dr. Fraser of Edinburgh
-are fully summed up by Wood and Ringer.
The Calabar bean has long been used—as its name imports
-forpurposes of justice in the African kingdom in which it
is indigenous. Interest being excited in its properties by the
reports of missionaries, they were investigated by Professor
Christison, and subsequently, more fully, by Dr. Fraser.
Since their results were published ( 1855-1863) Physostigma
628 PHYSOSTIGMA VENENOSUM .

and its active principle -- physostigmia or eseria - have been

tested on animals on a large scale, and on the eye in the
human subject. Little clinical application has yet been made
of the results ; but now thatwe have the more minute homæo.
pathic provings to fill in the outline, we shall be inexcusable
if we do not make that little expand into a great deal. There
are certainly few drugs whose physiological action is so
thoroughly known.
The normal poisonous action of the Calabar bean is to cause
speedy general paralysis, and death from failure of respiration
-consciousness being unaffected to the last. The seat of the
paralysis is the spinal cord itself, the vital properties of the
nerve -trunks and muscles being found intact. Reflex action
is abolished, and also sensibility so far as pain is concerned ;
but tactile impressions are perceived , and the muscular sense
is perfect. The muscles themselves are the seat of tremors
and fibrillary contractions of a very persistent character, which
seem due to a direct action of the drug upon them . In those
of the involuntary class this irritation goes on to active move
ments, so that the stomach, bowels, and bladder expel their
contents with frequency ,—the intestines being often twisted
-

up in knots. All the secretions - sweat, tears, saliva, fæces,

urine - are somewhat increased .
Two of the special actions of Physostigma are of peculiar
interest, —those which it exerts upon the heart and the
eye respectively.
1. In moderate doses the bean simply retards the heart's
action, not regularly, but by prolonging the diastole, in which
-when poisoning is induced — the organ stops. The retarda
tion seems due to an exaltation of the inhibitory power of the
terminal extremities (not of the central origin of the vagi.
It is accompanied by heightened arterial tension, and the
power of the heart is not diminished. But a larger dose
perceptibly weakens the cardiac impulse, and a very large one
may paralyse it at once, leaving it after death flaccid, dis
tended , and barely responsive to the strongest direct stimu
 PHYSOSTIGMA VENENOSUM . 629

lation . General coldness and pallor are always noticed in

poisoning by the bean .
2. Physostigma is almost the only drug besides Opium
which contracts the pupil. It does this whether locally or
internally exhibited . The careful investigations of von
Gräfe and Robertson have shown that the ciliary muscle is
contracted as well as — and even before — the iris, so that
accommodation is impaired, and myopia induced . There is
set up in the eye a condition precisely opposite to that caused
by Atropia, which produces dilatation of the pupil, paralysis
of accommodation , and presbyopia. The rationale of the action
is found by some in sympathetic paralysis ; by others in
excitation of the third nerve . I am unable to assent to
either hypothesis ; for I find none of the evidences of depressed
sympathetic energy, as we have seen them from the influence
of Opium, nor can I think that a drug which causes general
paralysis can stimulate one of the nerves of the cranio- spinal
axis . I should rather ascribe the condition to the direct action
of the drug on the muscular substance of the iris, answering
to that which we have seen it exerting upon other muscles.
Von Gräfe says that on carefully watching the progress of the
myosis, the iris is seen to contract convulsively with little jerks
or twitches, which are so small and rapid that they easily
escape observation . These seem analogous to the tremors of
the voluntary muscles and the peristaltic agitation of the
intestines. The action on accommodation (which consists in
approximation of both the far and the near point of vision)
progresses by the same spasms or jerks ; and oscillation of
the eyeballs has been observed.
A word as to the sensations which accompany these phe
nomena . In poisoning, they are those of extreme giddiness
and faintness and utter powerlessness, with sluggish articu
lation . When more moderate doses are taken , severe pressure
at the epigastrium , immediately below the sternum , is com
plained of ; it is accompanied with eructations. It is com
pared to that which results from bolting large morsels, or
41
630 PHYSOSTIGMA VENENOSUM .

swallowing indigestible food. The provers were mostly over

powered with drowsiness, and indisposed for mental work.
Many had a severe frontal headache, with a feeling of tension
in the muscles of the forehead. Though contraction of the
pupils is caused by the internal use of the drug in sufficient
quantity, no sensations of any moment are perceived in the
eyes. But when it is locally applied, the myopia of which I
have spoken occurs. Even near objects are not seen distinctly ;
and Mr. Bowman found when experimenting on himself that
astigmatism was produced. Using the eyes for binocular
vision (as in reading ) causes pain, blurring, and sense of
straining. Nervous achings may occur in the eyeball affected,
extending along the supra -orbital nerves and over half the
head ; and towards the end of the myotic action there is
experienced, even without provocation, a painful tension,
partly in the equator of the ball, and partly in the ciliary
region.
There are of course two possible applications of these facts
one on the principle contraria contrariis, the other on that
of similia similibus. Upon the former Physostigma has been
used in strychnia poisoning and in tetanus, and with occa
sional success . But such large doses are required to
induce
its physiological effects upon the cord that the heart often
becomes dangerously affected, and even peril from paralytic
asphyxia occurs. These inconveniences are well seen in a case
reported in much detail in the thirteenth volume of the
Practitioner (p. 338) ; and they were found by Dr. Hughes
Bennett's Committee to render the bean useless as a standing
antidote to strychnia. The excitant action of the drug on
unstriped muscular fibre has led to its use in atony of the
digestive and respiratory tubes (in one case causing "phantom
tumour ” ) ; and its power over the eye has been utilized for
the counteraction of the effects of atropia, and for the relief
of mydriasis and weakened accommodation when otherwise
arising. Its homeopathic application has been indicated by
Dr. Ringer, who has given it with much benefit in general
 PHYTOLACCA . 631

paralysis of the insane and progressive muscular atrophy. He

administers the thirtieth of a grain of the extract, a whole
grain being the ordinary dose. Dr. Woodyatt, of Chicago,
has recently put the drug to a very important use, viz. for
acquired myopia resulting from ciliary spasm , which he thinks
a frequent and important factor in the affection .
Physostigma, given in the third decimal dilution four times a
day, he has obtained “ results favourable beyond expectation." *
Dr. Woodyatt is a competent oculist, and his statements come
to us with every recommendation .
I have little doubt but that the study of the provings of the
Calabar bean will lead to further applications of it as time
goes on. It compares well with Gelseminum , and perhaps with
Baryta acetica . Muscaria, moreover, and the newly -discovered
Jaborandi have many analogies with it in their action on the
pupil and on secretion ; and , like Physostigma, are somewhat
antidotal to Atropia.
We will speak next of the poke,
Phytolacca.
The P. decandra of America is the variety commonly used ,
but the P. octandra of Australia seems to have the same
action.f The tincture is commonly prepared from the green
root ; but, as there is some reason to believe that the berries
act medicinally, especially in rheumatism , it might be better to
employ the whole plant.
The original proving of Phytolacca appeared in the second
volume of the Transactions of the American Institute of
Homeopathy. It is collated with other provings — making
sixteen in all — and several poisonings and experiments on
animals, in an 'arrangement of the drug which appears in
Dr. Hering's Materia Medica. The article on the drug in
Dr. Hale's New Remedies is also full of information
regarding it.
* United States Medical Investigator, ii, 375.
+ See Dr. Sherwin's remarks in Monthly Hom . Review , ix, 279.
632 PHYTOLACCA.

The interest of Phytolacca resides in three aspects of its

operation : its action on the throat, its power over certain
manifestations of syphilis and rheumatism , and its influence
upon the mammary glands.
I. Phytolacca is undoubtedly a specific irritant of the
throat. All the provers suffered more or less at this part.
The fauces appeared much, sometimes darkly , reddened, and
the tonsils swollen : one prover had thick white and yellow
mucus about the fauces. But it was a startling inference from
such premisses that Phytolacca would prove a valuable remedy
in diphtheria. Nevertheless, this inference Dr. Burt, one of
its provers, did make ; and his success and that of the many
American practitioners who have imitated his practice seems
to have justified him in so doing. Dr. Bayes has since intro
duced Phytolacca into English practice as the principal remedy
for diphtheria ; and again most gratifying results were
obtained both by himself and by many of his colleagues.
The only dissonant note was struck by myself : † and I fear I
must here prolong it.
That Phytolacca was curative in the cases recorded I do
not question for a momont. But on going carefully through
them I must say that I do not recognise in them the sym.
ptoms I have learned to dread in diphtheria. Some, indeed,
were instances of simple inflammatory ulceration of the
tonsils ; for when the so -called false membrane came away, it
left “ large holes " behind it, which the diphtheritic pellicle
never does. The great majority, however, were undoubtedly
diphtheritic in nature. But they seem to bear to the really
dangerous form of the disease much the same relation as scar
latina anginosa to scarlatina maligna. In no case 'among
those recorded in America or in England is fætor of the breath
mentioned, save in two out of my own three ; and both these
died. In nearly all there was high fever, with pains in the
head , back, and limbs - symptoms which are never present,
according to my experience, in bad cases of diphtheria. I
* See Monthly Hom . Reviero, vols. ix and x. † Ibid ., x, 169.
 PHYTOLACCA . 633

apprehend, indeed, that it is the occurrence of these very

symptoms which constitutes the special indication for Phyto
lacca . In a paper entitled ' An Account of fifty cases of
Diphtheria ’ which I read before the British Homeopathic
Society in 1870,* I have related how this form of the malady
first came before me in 1865 , and how then and subsequently
Phytolacca unmistakeably proved its specific remedy. Equally
mention, followed its use after Belladonna
good results, I may m
had failed in a case where, with these constitutional sym
ptoms, the “ large holes in the tonsils ” followed the disap
pearance of the white patches. But then you will read how,
becoming hopeful about the new remedy, I gave it assiduously
in a case of what my friend Dr. Hilbers graphically calls
“stinking diphtheria .” The throat certainly cleared under
its use ; but the morbid process went on in the nose, invaded
the larynx, and death from exhaustion closed the scene.
'I have thus been led to conclude that Phytolacca is specific
in diphtheria where high fever, with aching in head, back,
and limbs, is present ; but is incompetent to cope with the
malignant form of the disease. Nevertheless, the other variety
is genuine diphtheria, for it is quite capable of leaving
paralytic symptoms behind it ; so that Phytolacca is a real
anti- diphtheritic. If Dr. Burt's urinary symptoms are con
firmed , moreover, they go to show its essential homeopathicity
to the disease ; for to the inflamed and patchy throat they
add albuminuria. I am glad to find that Dr. Hale, in his
fourth edition, while insisting strongly on this last point,
agrees nevertheless with me as to the form of the malady to
which the use of Phytolacca should be restricted. He states
that in America it often occurs epidemically. Dr. Bayes now
66
seems to think that the medicine acts as a specific stimulant to
those organs and tissues which are primarily depressed by the
diphtheritic deposit -- the throat, the heart, and the stomach ."
He lays much stress on its application by wash or gargle
simultaneously with its internal administration .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxviii, 731 .
634 PHYTOLACCA .

II. Some of the facts mentioned in Dr. Hale's first account

of Phytolacca indicated that it was a periosteal medicine, like
Mezereum . A recent case of overdosing with it, which is
6
given at length in the ' Symptomatology ' of his fourth edition,
shows its power of causing periostitis of the forehead and
face, together with blotches, sore and painful, of the whole
surface of the body, afterwards invading the mouth and the
throat. The suggestion of secondary syphilis is here unmis.
takeable ; and we hear from time to time of its curing rupia,
ulcers of the feet, and other manifestations of this diathesis,
but more especially that periosteal affection which is called
syphilitic rheumatism . Extending its action in another direc
tion, it has been found to act well in true rheumatism affecting
the other fibrous tissues, as the sheaths of nerves and the
fasciæ ; herein resembling Rhus. The tincture prepared from
the berries seems especially serviceable here .
III. To the influence of Phytolacca on the mammary glands
attention was first called by Dr. Hale himself in the twenty.
first volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. The article
is reproduced in his New Remedies. It appears from this that
the poke root is in constant use in the dairies to remove
“ caking," i.e. inflammatory engorgement of the udders. Dr.
Hale has used it successfully for this purpose in the human
female, and finds it useful even after suppuration has com
menced, and when sinuses have formed . I have myself never
wanted any medicine but Bryonia in threatened milk abscess ;
but should the mischief outrun the abortive power of that
medicine should certainly try Phytolacca. I have recently
had a chronic case of mastitis in which it proved most bene
ficial. Dr. Hale commends this medicine also in irritable
mammary tumours, and where the breasts are morbidly
sensitive at the menstrual period or during suckling.
I once had a case where the administration of Phytolacca
obviated any injury which might have resulted from a neces
sarily obscure diagnosis. In a baby of a few months old, a
succession of restless nights occurred simultaneously with the
 PHYTOLACCA . 635

development of aa hard tender swelling about midway between

the nipple and the sternum , but nearer the latter than the
former. Whether the inflammation was affecting some of the
elements of the undeveloped mammary gland, or whether it
lay in the periosteum of a rib, seemed doubtful. In any case,
however, Phytolacca was indicated . I gave it in the sixth
dilution , and the malady rapidly disappeared.
These, II say, are the main spheres of the medicinal action
of Phytolacca. But the breast is not the only gland it affects;
nor is diphtheria the only form of throat disease over which it
exerts control. Several cases are on record proving its power
to disperse enlarged lymphatic and salivary glands ; and the
following case, reported by Dr. Allen, of New York, will show
what it can do in one form of chronic angina faucium .
“ The patient, a man aged 45, had had chronic follicular
pharyngitis for several years. No remedies had done him
much good.
Symptoms. - Physical : membrane lining fauces and
:

pharynx, as well as the velum pendulum and the uvula, pale,

puffy, and flabby. Uvula large, almost translucent. Rational :
distressing sense of enlargement of the calibre of the pharynx
and esophagus from the choanæ to the epigastrium . This
symptom much aggravated by exposure to damp winds. It
then begins at the choanæ , and in twelve hours extends to
the epigastrium . On reaching this point it provokes a cough,
paroxysmal, extremely distressing, and accompanied with very
profuse and exhausting expectoration of thick , starch - like
mucus . The whole chest then feels like a big, empty cask ,
as if its calibre were enlarged tenfold. Great constitutional
debility along with these attacks, so that the patient, who is
ordinarily intolerant of stimulants, can take whiskey to any
extent, and with great temporary relief.
“ Phytolacca decandra 6, a dose every other night for a
month, cured this condition.”
The analogues of Phytolacca are Mezereum , Guaiacum , Kali
hydriodicum and bichromicum , Mercurius, and Rhus.
636 PLATISA .

Its curative virtues have hitherto been obtained almost

entirely from the mother tincture.
I have next to make some observations on
Platina.
Our preparation is made by triturating the precipitated
metal. It would more correctly be called Platinum.
There is a pathogenesis of Platina in the second edition of
the Chronic Diseases. It contains 527 symptoms, most of
which are supplied by Gross. An admirable study of this
pathogenesis, and of the clinical uses of the metal, by Dr.
Veith Meyer, is translated in the second volume of the
Philadelphia Journal of Homeopathy. Upon this study
mainly my remarks will be based, though you will understand
that I do not vouch for the soundness of the pathogenetic
material he has used.
The chief action of Platina appears to be upon the nervous
centres -- the symptoms being generally characterised by de
pression. There is a strong tendency to paralysis and
anästhesia ; and in the emotional sphere there is anxiety and
apprehension , even to the fear of death. With this
perhaps through an action upon the abdominal and pelvie
plexusės — there is torpor of the intestinal canal, shown in
flatulence and constipation ; and also premature menstruation.
As is usually the case, many spasmodic and neuralgic phe
nomena are mixed up with those of paralysis and anesthesia .
In accordance with these pathogenetic indications, Platina
has hitherto been used mainly for hysteria and melancholia
in females, connected with deranged uterine health. It has
cured even religious melancholy in these subjects ; and
altogether may be said to be to women what Aurum is to
men . In corroboration of this remark, it may be observed
that Platina holds the same place in the treatment of chronic
ovarian disease as Aurum in the corresponding affections of
the testicle. Hering recommends it for induration of the
ovaries (Hahnemann bad already mentioned a similar con
 PLATINA . 637

dition in the uterus as indicating it) ; and Mr. Harmar Smith

has published a case of chronic ovarian irritation with
sterility in which it was curative.* The distinguishing
feature between Platina and Pulsatilla in these cases is that
with the former there is menorrhagia, with the latter the
reverse. Menorrhagia itself is often helped by Platina,
especially, Dr. Guernsey says, when a black and thick con
dition of the menstrual flow is present. Sexual excitement
is apt to accompany such phenomena ; and Platina is much
esteemed for this, even when it reaches to nymphomania .
It is also useful in such a condition in the opposite sex,
while below puberty ; I mean to subdue the morbid excite
ment which keeps up the habit of masturbation in young
boys who have been inducted into it. For this purpose Dr.
von Grauvogl commends it highly. Dr. Meyer thinks much
of it in the treatment of hysteria, when the patients are
depressed ; herein contrasting with Ignatia, where they are
keenly impressionable and capricious.
Platina has also some points of usefulness which remind us
of those of Plumbum, to whose effects it has been suggested as
an antidote. It is useful in some superficial neuralgiæ ,
accompanied with torpor and numbness. Hahnemann
mentions " constipation while travelling "" as indicating it ; and
in this trouble when occurring in women whose uterine health
is imperfect, it is often helpful. Dr. Guernsey describes its
stools as putty -like, so hindering their own expulsion.
The chloride of platinum has been used successfully in the
old school in the treatment of chronic syphilis and of condy
lomata, acting very much like the chloride of gold . Höfer,
who has introduced it here, found six grains to produce in
himself a violent headache, chiefly occipital. A very severe
and obstinate syphilitic headache in a woman , which iodide of
potassium alone seemed unable to cure, went on rapidly to
recovery when I gave the chloride of platinum ( five drops of
the third decimal dilution twice daily) as an alternating
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxv, 157.
638 PLUMBUM .

remedy. I was led to its selection by the profound depression

which was present. As to condylomata, Teste long ago
classed Platina with Thuja as an anti -sycotic.
The analogues of Platina are the Aurum , Pulsatilla,
Ignatia, and Plumbum I have already named . You will find
their points of resemblance and difference well pointed out
(together with those also of Asafoetida and Crocus) in Dr.
Meyer's article.
Platina has generally been used in the higher potencies,
from the sixth to the thirtieth ; but Dr. Meyer professes
himself quite satisfied with the second and third triturations,
in which I agree with him .
I come now to the important metal lead, to
Plumbum .
Either the precipitated metal itself, the carbonate, or the
acetate may be used to obtain the specific action of lead . They
are all triturated for homeopathic use.
A pathogenesis of Plumbum was published by Hartlaub
and Trinks in the first volume of their Arzneimittellehre. It
contains 1024 symptoms, of which 565 are cited from authors ;
the remainder being the result, as it is stated, of “ a careful
proving on the healthy by means of moderate doses of the
9

acetate.” In this five persons took part. One of the best

pathogeneses of the drug, however, is the well -known account
given by Tanquerel des Planches of the phenomena occurring
in workers with the metal. * A schema of the symptoms he
enumerates is given by Dr. Black , in the appendix to the first
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy.
With regard to these, I need only remind you that the
earliest symptoms of saturnine poisoning are the well -known
<
“ lead colic " -severe spasmodic pains in the abdomen , from
contraction of the colon, with obstinate constipation,and
“ dropped hand , " from paralysis of the extensor muscles of
* Traité des maladies de Plomb, Paris, 1839.
 PLUMBUM . 639

the forearm , accompanied ( if not caused ) by wasting of their

substance. More profound poisoning of the system induces a
kind of degeneration of all the tissues. The nervous centres
are found indurated or softened ; and headache, amaurosis,
neuralgia , palsy , anesthesia , epilepsy occur during life. The
muscular tissue throughout the body is wasted and con
tracted . The kidneys are small and granular. There is
complete decay of the bodily and mental powers, with pro
found melancholia .
Let us consider separately each of these effects, or groups
of effects, in connexion with the use of Plumbum as a
medicine.
1. The abdominal phenomena of lead -poisoning at once
suggest it as a remedy for colic and constipation, whether
occurring separately or together. And indeed I know of no
better instance of the truth of the law of similars than the
beautiful action of Plumbum in such conditions. For obsti
nate habitual constipation , when the stools are dry and lumpy,
and the intestines half- paralytic and half -crampy, I have the
utmost confidence in it. It is no less valuable in what Dr.
Copeman calls “ obstipation " —that is, in impaction of fæces.
Of this you may read a good instance by Dr. Lohrbacher in
the twenty -ninth volume of the British Journal of Homeo
pathy. This use of lead, inexplicable save upon the homeo
pathic hypothesis, has been recently imported into ordinary
practice by Dr. Thorowgood, of course without acknowledg
ment of its source .* We carry it still farther, relying upon
the medicine in any form of obstruction of the bowels that
has not a mechanical cause, and in incarcerated and even
strangulated hernia. You will do well to read the remarks of
Drs. Baumann and Mailänder on this subject in the thirty
first volume of the British Journal. The latter generally suc
ceeds in strangulated hernia with Belladonna and Nux
vomica ; but, if these fail, he resorts to the knife. Dr.
Baumann considers that, before this extreme remedy is
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxi, 376.
610 PLUMBUM .

sought, we have a resource in Plumbum , and adduces good

evidence for his belief, of which indeed there is no lack else
where.
Nor less when colic is the prominent point of similarity to
the effects of lead is its medicinal power displayed. Of this
Dr. Holland lately communicated a striking case to the British
Homeopathic Society. * The patient bad been suffering from
most agonising abdominal spasms for two days, with vomiting,
and suppression of stool and urine. A grain of Plumbum
aceticum , third decimal, was given ; and in less than ten
minutes the patient fell asleep, waking after many hours free
from pain, and able to relieve his bowels of a mass of scybalæ.
The next day he was well. Most of us have probably seen
similar good effects from the medicine, though under less
striking circumstances.
The association of colic with constipation, and of constipa.
tion with colic, always forms the special indication for
Plumbum as a remedy for either. But such association is not
essential. The habitual costiveness in which the medicine is
so efficacious may be quite painless ; and on the other hand
Bähr has related one case, and I myself another , of what
may fairly be called neuralgic enterodynia cured by it, where
the bowels were regular enough. In such cases the sense of
retraction in the abdomen mentioned as characteristic by Dr.
Guernsey, or the actual bard and tense condition observed by
Bähr, may guide to its choice.
2. Of the paralysis of saturnine intoxication I have already
spoken in its most familiar form of “ wrist -drop," i. e. loss of
power of the extensors of the hands. But, while much more
frequently occurring in the upper than in the lower extremi
ties, yet it every now and then invades the latter. Lead
paralysis is rarely accompanied with anæsthesia, though lesd
anesthesia as an independent affection is common enough.
The paralysis is preceded often by a trembling ( tremblottement
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxii, 79. .
+ Ibid., xxii, 239.
 PLUMBUM . 611

saturnine) of the affected muscles, sometimes by spasms and

shooting or tearing pains. It is partial rather than general ;
and Tanquerel des Planches states that he was frequently
astonished to find that muscles were paralysed whose nerve
supplied others also that were not paralysed. There is
always marked atrophy of the affected muscles; and some
times this condition becomes general, so that the patient
resembles a walking skeleton. The muscles, when examined
post -mortem , are found wasted and very pale, and have some
times the appearance of white fibrous tissue.
It is impossible not to be reminded here, even more than
with Phosphorus, of the disease known as progressive mus
cular atrophy or wasting palsy. The local selection, the pre
dominant atrophy, the presence of trembling (fibrillary
contractions) and absence of anæsthesia correspond in the
two. Trousseau admits that the differential diagnosis is
attended with difficulty ; and can only adduce by way of
distinction the different behaviour of the muscles when sub
mitted to the electric stimulus, and the history of the evo
lution of the symptoms. To the former I can attach no real
importance, and as to the latter M. Trousseau is inconsistent
with himself. “ In the lead -disease, ” he says, “palsy precedes
atrophy,” leaving it to be understood that in wasting palsy
atrophy precedes loss of power. But he himself had already
made the following remark on the case of the latter malady
which gave rise to his clinical lecture. You may remember
that Dr. Duchenne himself, who honoured us with his pre
sence during our round, had shown that most of the muscles
of the arm and fore -arm still contracted under the influence
of electricity, whilst the patient could not voluntarily move his
hands or his fore -arms. One could not but suppose, there
fore, that previous to any anatomical change, which seemed
not to exist then, the peripheral extremities of the nerves had
undergone a modification, in consequence of which they had
lost the power of rousing muscular contraction. A loss of ex
citability ofthe peripheral extremities of the nerves would therefore
642 PLUMBUM .

precede the degeneration of the muscular fibres, a fact perfectly

in accordance with pathological physiology."
Consider, then , the experiments on rabbits which are
related in the seventeenth volume of the North American
Journal of Homoeopathy, and which point strongly to the
same analogy. Read, moreover, the series of cases of muscular
atrophy given in the first volume of the Practitioner to illustrate
the effects of electricity in its treatment. In several of these
it remained doubtful to the last whether the poison of lead
was not the exciting cause of the disease. I think that, in the
face of this evidence, you will warrant me in recommending
from the homeopathic point of view the persistent trial of
Plumbum in the first case of wasting palsy which comes under
notice.
The paralytic conditions in which Plumbum has hitherto
been used in the school of Hahnemann are principally those
resembling its wrist-drop. Drs.. Dudgeon , * Sharp ,t and
Chalmers I have each recorded a cure of a case of the kind ;
and Dr. Bayes speaks of having seen others.
3. I think that the epilepsy of lead -poisoning has hardly
received sufficient attention hitherto . It is one of the earliest
and most constant symptoms of the “ secondary saturnine
intoxication ,"—colic and wrist-drop being ranked as primary
phenomena. It therefore implies the existence of some amount
of degeneration of the nervous centres, thus rendering
Plumbum as truly homeopathic to chronic as Hydrocyanic
acid to recent epilepsy. I know of no experience with it as
yet ; but I agree with Bähr in ranking it with Cuprum as the
remedy from which most benefit may be expected in confirmed
cases of the disease .
4. Plumbum , from its pathogenetic effects, should be no
less beneficial in local spasms than in general convulsions ;
and so it has proved . Dr. Stokes has put on record a case of
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxix, 612.
+ Essays on Medicine, p. 388 .
I Monthly Hom . Review , xiii, 145.
 PLUMBUM . 643

cramps of the calves of long standing rapidly cured by it ; *

Drs. Chapman † and Cooper have illustrated its value in
spasmodic conditions of the rectum and anus, and Teste has
removed with it painful retraction of the testicles. Dr. Dyce
Brown has called our attention I to the important observation
that vaginismus has been observed as an effect of lead -poisoning
-a fact which may yet be turned to practical service, though
I found the medicine inoperative in a case in which I gave it .
In a case of incurable paralysis which I once treated with it,
it almost entirely removed the cramps which constituted the
most distressing element of the case .
5. The neuralgic pains of lead -poisoning are hardly less
marked than its spasms. They occur even in acute poisoning
by the acetate ; and among the workers in lead are the sym
ptoms most frequently seen after the colic. They are the
arthralgies of Tanquerel des Planches, who explains that he
uses apopov in the sense of limb, not of joint. He describes
the pains as sharp in character ; not precisely following the
track of the nervous cords ; constant, but becoming acute by
paroxysms ; diminished by pressure and increased by motion ;
and accompanied by cramps. They are sometimes felt in the
thorax also , but never, I think, in the face.
I have not here any therapeutic experience to record.
6. I come now to the action of lead upon the urinary organs,
which are an important seat of its influence. In the first
place, we have Dr. Ringer's statement that after the admi
nistration of its salts there is an increased amount of mucus
in the urine, with signs of irritation of the lining membrane
of the bladder, even to the extent of inducing a catarrhal
condition . Correspondingly Teste claims to have cured with
Plumbum several chronic affections of the urinary organs.
But of still greater interest is the action of the poison on the
kidneys. These are found, as I have said ,smalland granular :
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 128.
+ Ibid ., ii. 170 .
1 Monthly Hom . Review , xiii, 574.
 PLUMBUM ,

there is present the contracted kidney , which constitutes the

most serious form of Bright's disease. So frequently does
this lesion occur in the subjects of plumbism , that Dr.
Dickinson states that it was found in twenty -six out of forty
two workers in lead who died from various causes in
St. George's Hospital. During life, albuminuria is an evidence
of the mischief being set up ; and it has been thought that
the saturnine epilepsy may sometimes be due to it.
Another effect of the renal degeneration induced by lead
is that the separation of urates from the blood is checked, so
that the uric acid of the urine is diminished while that of the
blood is increased. This is the pathological condition which,
according to Dr. Garrod, excites gouty inflammation ; and he
and Dr. Ringer agree in stating, from experience, that if to a
gouty person , free at the time from the special manifestation
of the disease, a salt of lead is administered, it developes an
acute attack of gout, with its usual symptoms of severe pain
and high fever. Dr. Garrod accounts in this way for the
frequency with which gout appears among workers in lead as
compared with those following other occupations. Of all this
there need be no question . But it is another thing to suppose
that lead causes its renal degeneration through the inter
mediary development of gout. That its kidney is the “ gouty
kidney ” is unquestionable :: but only , I think, because both
it and the gouty poison have the same renal action. It is
admitted that in many instances the granular kidney is the
only gouty manifestation present in the subjects of lead
poisoning ; and Dr. George Moore has entered into a thorough
examination of the evidence in a paper contributed to the
twenty -fourth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy,
the result of which is entirely adverse to the causation of true
gout - or rheumatism - by lead .
We conclude, then , that lead causes granular degeneration
of the kidneys by a direct and specific action ; and should be
a hopeful remedy for the disease, whether of gouty or other
origin. No medicine, moreover, so closely corresponds to the
 PLUMBUM . 615

general phenomena of the malady - as the atheroma, the

cachexia , and the depression of spirits : the amaurosis also of
the two is precisely similar. The only recorded experience of
the use of lead in renal disease is that of Lewald , as given by
Dr. Ringer. He found it constantly diminish the albumen
in the urine, though only by nine or ten grains in the twenty
four hours. The diminution appeared to hold no constant
relation to the quantity of lead administered . At the same
time, and with the same absence of quantitative relation to
the drug, the amount of urine was increased in the same
period by 200 cubic centimétres. The form of the renal mis
chief here is not stated . I have myself tried the treatment in .
two well- characterised cases of granular degeneration. In
one the effect was nil, save to relieve an accompanying
constipation . In the other great improvement in general
health ensued for a time; but a chill caused pericarditis and
death .
In these six categories I have included the main effects and
uses of Plumbum . But other conditions of body every now
and then come across us in practice which remind us of lead
poisoning, and in which we may expect benefit from its use.
Such is the melancholia religiosa of which two cures by it are
recorded by Dr. Chapman , * and with which great constipation
is generally , as there, associated. Dr. Sharp also speaks of
using it beneficially here. Dr. Winter points out its homæo
pathicity to chlorosis , and gives instances of its successful
use. Bähr suggests its employment in chronic encephalitis
and myelitis, to wbich indeed its effects on the nervous centres
point. I have myself seen good results from it in chronic dull
headaches, with depressed spirits and constipation . Again,
the effects of drinking water contaminated with the metal
must be taken into account as homeopathic indications for
the use of the drug. An interesting series of such cases bas
lately been communicated to the British Journal by Dr. von
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., iii , 170.
+ Ibid ., iii, 218.
42
646 PLUMBUM .

Tunzelmann . * In one amblyopia with double vision occurred ;

in another icterus and (nocturnal) vomiting ; a third had
renal congestion, a fourth anasarca and paralysis ; in another
pulmonary consolidation with wasting occurred ; and in yet
another hæmoptysis and epistaxis — all these troubles passing
off as the noxious influence was removed. You will remember,
moreover, the slow pulse of lead -poisoning ; and it is worth
noting that in a case related in Frank's Magazin a quarter of
a grain of the acetate three times a day caused swelling, pain,
and great weight in the testicles. Plumbum is another medi.
cine whose remedial effects seem to me far from having been
exhausted .
Alumina, Opium, Platina, and Zinc are more or less closely
allied medicines.

* Vol. xxxii, p. 17.

 LECTURE XXXVI.

PODOPHYLLUM-PULSATILLA.

The first medicine of the two I shall discuss to -day is one

which we homeopathists took many years ago from the
so -called " eclectic " practitioners of America, and of which
ordinary medicine has since made the acquisition from the
same source — the mandrake or May -apple,
Podophyllum .
We use a tincture prepared from the root of the P. peltatum .
Podophyllin, which is now so much used as a cholagogue, is
a resinoid derived from the plant, and seems to contain its
active virtues. It is triturated, or dissolved in rectified spirit,
for our purposes.
Podophyllum was proved, in the 1st, 3rd, and 15th dilu
tions, by Dr. Williamson in 1844 ; and his results published,
with a few symptoms from five others, in the Materia Medica
ofAmerican Provings. But the knowledge of the action of the
drug is best learned from its toxical and curative powers, as
Dr. Hale records them in his New Remedies ; and from the
numerous experiments on animals which have been made with
it during the last twenty years.
Podophyllum came to us with the reputation of a cholagogue
purgative, resembling calomel. Of the three sets of experiments
which have been made with it on the lower animals — those of
Dr. Anstie ,** Dr. Hughes Bennett,t and Dr. Rutherford,I
* Med . Times and Gazette, 1863, i, 326 .
+ British Med . Journ ., 1869, i , 418.
I Ibid ., 1875, ii.
648 PODOPHYLLUM .

the two former alone bear on this question . Dr. Anstie found
an increased quantity of bile in the evacuations a compara
tively rare phenomenon ; but the liver in most of his autopsies:
is stated to have been somewhat congested. Dr. Hughes
Bennett found purgation by the drug, as by other agents,
diminish the flow of bile through a biliary fistula ; but even
when the dose fell short of produciug this effect, the solid
elements of the secretion were reduced in quantity, though
its fluid portion was somewhat increased . Both observers
seem to infer that Podophyllum has no action on the liver;
but I cannot think that such a conclusion is fairly deducible
from their facts. On the contrary, they seem to be such as
to invite further experimentation, especially upon human sub
jects, with the view of following up their hints. My own
expectation is that Podophyllum will be found to act here as
we have seen Mercury doing in the mouth , i. e. that its irri.
tant influence on the duodenum (which will presently come
before us) leads to a copious flow of bile from the gall- bladder
and liver ; but that it may also act on the liver itself, con
gesting it, and so impairing its function. The former part of
this hypothesis seems confirmed by the recent experiments
of Dr. Rutherford and M. Vignal, who, on introducing
Podophyllin into the duodenum of fasting dogs, found it
increase the amount both of the solid and fluid elements of
the bile.
However this may be, there is — as with Mercury - a con
sensus of opinion as to its therapeutical virtues which no
physiological evidence can set aside. Doses much too small
to induce purgation from the fourth to the hundredth of a
grain - have been shown by practitioners of both schools to
act with the best effect in relieving hepatic torpor and partial
stagnation, to the great benefit of the patient. I would
refer you especially to the observations of Dr. John Moore
in the thirty - first volume of the British Journal of Homeo
pathy. How the drug acts here has yet to be proved. Pro
visionally, we must reckon it a cholagogue ; but further
 PODOPHYLLUM. 649

experimentation may lead us to a different conclusion, and,

so long as we stop short of its purgative effects, no harm ever
seems to be done .
We get on clearer ground when we come to the in .
testinal influence of the drug. That it readily caused
vomiting and purging was well known ; but the experiments
of Dr. Anstie have enabled us to define this action with great
precision. He found, in numerous experiments on dogs and
cats, that an alcoholic solution of Podophyllin , when intro
duced into the peritoneal cavity, caused no inflammation
there, but set up in the small intestines an intense hyperæmia .
The duodenum was chiefly affected , and actual ulceration was
more than once developed there. The lining membrane of the
whole small gut was generally found covered with bloody
mucus . The inflammation usually ceased at the ileo -cæcal
valve, but occasionally invaded the large intestine. The
frequent stools consisted of glairy mucus, sometimes stained
with bile, but more commonly with blood.
These are very important results. They give us in Podo
phyllum another medicine to add to Arsenic, Kali bichromicum ,
and Uranium nitricum as acting specifically on the duodenum,
and capable of controlling ulceration therein . And more, they
give us a remedy truly homeopathic to enteritis affecting the
jejunum and ileum, which neither these nor Mercurius cor
rosivus are. The first enabled me once to cure a duodenitis,
which was resisting Arsenic. The latter shows aa local affinity
for the diarrhoea of typhoid, in which, and in simple enteritis
affecting the same parts, the drug may do good service.
No action on the rectum was manifested in the animals
poisoned by Dr. Anstie ; but in the human subject — especially
in children — this part is readily affected by the drug, as
shown by tenesmus and prolapsus recti complicating the
diarrhea. The feeble affinity of Podophyllum for the colon
makes it unsuitable for ordinary dysentery, which has its seat
>

there. But when dysenteric diarrhea appears to depend on

inflammatory irritation of the rectum , it will give rapid relief.
 650 PODOPHYLLUM.

Such a malady is not uncommon in children, and is generally

accompanied by painful prolapse of the rectum at each stool.
Dr. Hale speaks of having seen two such cases caused by the
over-use of the drug ; and I have recorded one, and Mr.
Harmar Smith another, * of speedy cure by it. In simple
prolapsus ani from debility, moreover, when occurring in
childhood, beautiful results are almost always attainable from
minute doses of the drug.
Besides enteritis of the small intestine, and dysentery of
the rectum , Podophyllum is useful in several forms of diar
rhoea, both acute and chronic. Drs. Ringer and Phillips
concur with us in praising it here, adding the necessary caution
that it must be administered in very small doses. The former,
moreover, confirms what homeopathists have always regarded
as a main indication for the medicine in chronic diarrhea,
viz . its recurrence especially in the early morning. It is often
serviceable in cholera nostras and cholera infantum ; but its
place in their therapeutics is hardly yet defined.
A good deal of evidence has accumulated of late showing a
power on the part of Podophyllum of benefiting prolapse of
the uterus as well as of the rectum . I know not whether it
is by a direct action that it accomplishes this. Dr. Guernsey
speaks of a sense of falling in the abdomen as especially
indicating it.
In the fourth edition of his New Remedies, Dr. Hale gives
two interesting communications on Podophyllum , one from
Dr. Scudder, an " eclectic " practitioner, evidently “almost
persuaded to be a ” homeopathist ; the other from a promi.
nent writer of our own school, Dr. Searle, of Brooklyn. The
former gives, from his experience, certain peculiar symptoms
as indicating the choice of the drug. They are fulness of the
superficial veins ; dull unpleasant pain, or weight, in the hypo
gastric region ; a sharply -defined ache in the sacro -ischiatie
foramina, with tenderness on pressure ; and pain in the course
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv , 673 ; xxix, 399 .
+ See ibid ., xxvi, 654.
 PULSATILLA . 651

of the ulnar nerve. He also mentions a peculiar stool as

characteristic of it,—the first part being large and hard, but
then fluid and wind following. Dr. Searle compares the
morning diarrhea of Podophyllum with that of some other
medicines. “In the morning aggravations of the bowel sym
ptoms," he writes, “Podophyllum resembles Aloes and Sul
phur, but may easily be differentiated from these. The stool
of Aloes is a windy spurt of watery or slimy yellow fæcal
matter, the desire for which can hardly for an instant be con
trolled from a seeming if not real weakness of the internal
sphincter . Sulphur demands equal haste from tenesmus . It
has a brown stool, not especially flatulent, and neither so
scanty as that of Aloes, nor so profuse as that of Podophyllum .
Podophyllum gets its victim up early , but not in so great
haste as the others ; and has a very profuse, yellowish or
greenish , stool — so profuse, indeed, that one wonders whence
so much can come. It often contains undigested food , and is
very offensive to the smell, having sometimes the odour of
carrion .”
Dr. Searle might have mentioned Apis, Nuphar, and Rumex
as additional analogues to Podophyllum in respect of morning
diarrhea. In its general action it resembles Colchicum , Iris,
Leptandra, and Mercurius.
The third attenuation of Podophyllin seems to give us all
its strictly homøopathic applications.
My second medicine is the meadow anemone, pasque flower,
or wind flower

Pulsatilla.
It was the P. nigricans which was introduced into medicine
by Stoerck, and proved by Hahnemann. But the American
species has been found, as we shall see, to possess similar
properties ; and chemical research has discovered that the
P. pratensis also contains the active principle of the plant,
anemonin. So, except as there is difference in strength, it
 611 PLUMBUM .

1
there is present the contracted kidney, which constitutes the
most serious form of Bright's disease. So frequently does
this lesion occur in the subjects of plum bism , that Dr.
Dickinson states that it was found in twenty -six out of forty
two workers in lead who died from various causes in
St. George's Hospital . During life, albuminuria is an evidence
of the mischief being set up ; and it has been thought that
the saturnine epilepsy may sometimes be due to it.
Another effect of the renal degeneration induced by lead
is that the separation of urates from the blood is checked, so
that the uric acid of the urine is diminished while that of the
blood is increased . This is the pathological condition which,
according to Dr. Garrod, excites gouty inflammation ; and he
and Dr. Ringer agree in stating, from experience, that if to a
gouty person , free at the time from the special manifestation
of the disease, a salt of lead is administered, it developes an
acute attack of gout, with its usual symptoms of severe pain
and high fever. Dr. Garrod accounts in this way for the
frequency with which gout appears among workers in lead as
compared with those following other occupations. Of all this
there need be no question. But it is another thing to suppose
that lead causes its renal degeneration through the inter
mediary development of gout. That its kidney is the “ gouty
kidney ” is unquestionable : but only , I think, because both
it and the gouty poison have the same renal action. It is
admitted that in many instances the granular kidney is the
only gouty manifestation present in the subjects of lead.
poisoning ; and Dr. George Moore has entered into a thorough
examination of the evidence in a paper contributed to the
twenty -fourth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy,
the result of which is entirely adverse to the causation of true
gout - or rheumatism - by lead .
We conclude, then, that lead causes granular degeneration
of the kidneys by a direct and specific action ; and should be
a hopeful remedy for the disease, whether of gouty or other
origin. No medicine, moreover, so closely corresponds to the
 PLUMBUM . 645

general phenomena of the malady — as the atheroma, the

cachexia, and the depression of spirits : the amaurosis also of
the two is precisely similar. The only recorded experience of
the use of lead in renal disease is that of Lewald , as given by
Dr. Ringer. He found it constantly diminish the albumen
in the urine, though only by nine or ten grains in the twenty
four hours. The diminution appeared to hold no constant
relation to the quantity of lead administered . At the same
time, and with the same absence of quantitative relation to
the drug, the amount of urine was increased in the same
period by 200 cubic centimétres. The form of the renal mis
chief here is not stated . I have myself tried the treatment in
two well -characterised cases of granular degeneration. In
one the effect was nil, save to relieve an accompanying
constipation . In the other great improvement in general
health ensued for a time ; but a chill caused pericarditis and
death.
In these six categories I have included the main effects and
uses of Plumbum . But other conditions of body every now
and then come across us in practice which remind us of lead
poisoning, and in which we may expect benefit from its use.
Such is the melancholia religiosa of which two cures by it are
recorded by Dr. Chapman ,* and with which great constipation
is generally, as there, associated. Dr. Sharp also speaks of
using it beneficially here. Dr. Winter points out its homeo
pathicity to chlorosis, and gives instances of its successful
use. Bähr suggests its employment in chronic encephalitis
and myelitis, to which indeed its effects on the nervous centres
point. I have myself seen good results from it in chronic dull
headaches, with depressed spirits and constipation. Again,
the effects of drinking water contaminated with the metal
must be taken into account as homøopathic indications for
the use of the drug. An interesting series of such cases has
lately been communicated to the British Journal by Dr. von
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., iii, 170.
+ Ibid ., iii, 218.
1

42
1
!
646 PLUMBUM .

Tunzelmann . * In one amblyopia with double vision occurred ;

in another icterus and (nocturnal) vomiting ; a third had
renal congestion, a fourth anasarca and paralysis ; in another
pulmonary consolidation with wasting occurred ; and in yet
another hæmoptysis and epistaxis - all these troubles passing
off as the noxious influence was removed . You will remember,
moreover , the slow pulse of lead -poisoning ; and it is worth
noting that in a case related in Frank's Magazin a quarter of
a grain of the acetate three times a day caused swelling, pain,
and great weight in the testicles. Plumbum is another medi.
eine whose remedial effects seem to me far from having been
exhausted.
Alumina , Opium , Platina, and Zinc are more or less closely
allied medicines .

* Vol. xxxii, p. 17 .
 LECTURE XXXVI.

PODOPHYLLUM-PULSATILLA.

The first medicine of the two I shall discuss to -day is one

which we homeopathists took many years ago from the
so-called " eclectic " practitioners of America, and of which
ordinary medicine has since made the acquisition from the
same source —the mandrake or May -apple,
Podophyllum .
We use a tincture prepared from the root of the P. peltatum .
Podophyllin, which is now so much used as a cholagogue, is
a resinoid derived from the plant, and seems to contain its
active virtues. It is triturated, or dissolved in rectified spirit,
for our purposes.
Podophyllum was proved , in the 1st, 3rd, and 15th dilu
tions, by Dr. Williamson in 1844 ; and his results published ,
with a few symptoms from five others, in the Materia Medica
of American Provings. But the knowledge of the action of the
drug is best learned from its toxical and curative powers, as
Dr. Hale records them in his New Remedies ; and from the
numerous experiments on animals which have been made with
it during the last twenty years.
Podophyllum came to us with the reputation of a cholagogue
purgative,resembling calomel. Of the three sets of experiments
which have been made with it on the lower animals—those of
Dr. Anstie,* Dr. Hughes Bennett,† and Dr. Rutherford,I
* Med . Times and Gazette, 1863, i, 326.
t British Med . Journ ., 1869, i , 418.
I Ibid. , 1875, ii.
648 PODOPHYLLUM .

the two former alone bear on this question. Dr. Anstie found
an increased quantity of bile in the evacuations a compara
tively rare phenomenon ; but the liver in most of his autopsies
is stated to have been somewhat congested. Dr. Hughes
Bennett found purgation by the drug, as by other agents,
diminish the flow of bile through a biliary fistula ; but even
when the dose fell short of produciug this effect, the solid
elements of the secretion were reduced in quantity, though
its fluid portion was somewhat increased . Both observers
seem to infer that Podophyllum has no action on the liver ;
but I cannot think that such a conclusion is fairly deducible
from their facts. On the contrary, they seem to be such as
to invite further experimentation, especially upon human sub
jects, with the view of following up their hints. My own
expectation is that Podophyllum will be found to act here as
we have seen Mercury doing in the mouth, i.e. that its irri.
tant influence on the duodenum (which will presently come
before us) leads to a copious flow of bile from the gall -bladder
and liver ; but that it may also act on the liver itself, con
gesting it, and so impairing its function . The former part of
this hypothesis seems confirmed by the recent experiments
of Dr. Rutherford and M. Vignal, who, on introducing
Podophyllin into the duodenum of fasting dogs, found it
increase the amount both of the solid and fluid elements of
the bile .
However this may be, there is — as with Mercury - a con
sensus of opinion as to its therapeutical virtues which no
physiological evidence can set aside. Doses much too small
to induce purgation - from the fourth to the hundredth of a
grain - have been shown by practitioners of both schools to
act with the best effect in relieving hepatic torpor and partial
stagnation, to the great benefit of the patient. I would
refer you especially to the observations of Dr. John Moore
in the thirty -first volume of the British Journal of Homæo
pathy. How the drug acts here has yet to be proved . Pro
visionally, we must reckon it a cholagogue ; but further
>
 PODOPHYLLUM . 649

experimentation may lead us to a different conclusion , and,

so long as we stop short of its purgative effects, no harm ever
seems to be done.
We get on clearer ground when we come to the in
testinal influence of the drug. That it readily caused
vomiting and purging was well known ; but the experiments
of Dr. Anstie have enabled us to define this action with great
precision. He found, in numerous experiments on dogs and
cats , that an alcoholic solution of Podophyllin, when intro
duced into the peritoneal cavity, caused no inflammation
there, but set up in the small intestines an intense hyperæmia.
The duodenum was chiefly affected, and actual ulceration was
>

more than once developed there. The lining membrane of the

whole small gut was generally found covered with bloody
mucus . The inflammation usually ceased at the ileo -cæcal
valve, but occasionally invaded the large intestine. The
frequent stools consisted of glairy mucus, sometimes stained
with bile, but more commonly with blood.
These are very important results. They give us in Podo
phyllum another medicine to add to Arsenic, Kali bichromicum ,
and Uranium nitricum as acting specifically on the duodenum,
and capable of controlling ulceration therein. And more, they
give us a remedy truly homeopathic to enteritis affecting the
jejunum and ileum, which neither these nor Mercurius cor
rosivus are .The first enabled me once to cure a duodenitis,
which was resisting Arsenic. The latter shows a local affinity
for the diarrhea of typhoid, in which, and in simple enteritis
affecting the same parts, the drug may do good service.
No action on the rectum was manifested in the animals
poisoned by Dr. Anstie ; but in the human subject - especially
in children — this part is readily affected by the drug, as
shown by tenesmus and prolapsus recti complicating the
diarrhea. The feeble affinity of Podophyllum for the colon
makes it unsuitable for ordinary dysentery, which has its seat
there. But when dysenteric diarrhea appears to depend on
inflammatory irritation of the rectum , it will give rapid relief.
 650 PODOPHYLLUM.

Such a malady is not uncommon in children , and is generally

accompanied by painful prolapse of the rectum at each stool.
Dr. Hale speaks of having seen two such cases caused by the
over-use of the drug ; and I have recorded one, and Mr.
Harmar Smith another, * of speedy cure by it. In simple
prolapsus ani from debility , moreover , when occurring in
childhood, beautiful results are almost always attainable from
minute doses of the drug.
Besides enteritis of the small intestine, and dysentery of
the rectum , Podophyllum is useful in several forms of diar
rhoea, both acute and chronic. Drs. Ringer and Phillips
concur with us in praising it here, adding the necessary caution
that it must be administered in very small doses. The former,
moreover, confirms what homeopathists have always regarded
as a main indication for the medicine in chronic diarrhea,
viz. its recurrence especially in the early morning. It is often
serviceable in cholera nostras and cholera infantum ; but its
place in their therapeutics is hardly yet defined .
A good deal of evidence has accumulated of late showing a
power on the part of Podophyllum of benefiting prolapse of
the uterus as well as of the rectum . I know not whether it
is by a direct action that it accomplishes this . Dr. Guernsey
speaks of a sense of falling in the abdomen as especially
indicating it.
In the fourth edition of his New Remedies, Dr. Hale gives
two interesting communications on Podophyllum , one from
Dr. Scudder, an " eclectic" practitioner, evidently “ almost
persuaded to be a " homeopathist ; the other fronu a promi
nent writer of our own school, Dr. Searle, of Brooklyn. The
former gives, from his experience, certain peculiar symptoms
as indicating the choice of the drug. They are fulness of the
superficial veins ; dull unpleasant pain , or weight, in the hypo
gastric region ; a sharply -defined ache in the sacro - ischiatic
foramina, with tenderness on pressure ; and pain in the course
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 673 ; xxix, 399.
+ See ibid ., xxvi, 654.
 PULSATILLA . 651

of the ulnar nerve . He also mentions a peculiar stool as

characteristic of it , -- the first part being large and hard, but
then fluid and wind following. Dr. Searle compares the
morning diarrhea of Podophyllum with that of some other
medicines. “In the morning aggravations of the bowel sym
ptoms, ” he writes, “ Podophyllum resembles Aloes and Sul
phur, but may easily be differentiated from these . The stool
of Aloes is a windy spurt of watery or slimy yellow fæcal
matter, the desire for which can hardly for an instant be con
trolled from a seeming if not real weakness of the internal
sphincter. Sulphur demands equal haste from tenesmus. It
has a brown stool, not especially flatulent, and neither so
scanty as that of Aloes, nor so profuse as that of Podophyllum .
Podophyllum gets its victim up early, but not in so great
haste as the others ; and has a very profuse, yellowish or
greenish, stool-- so profuse, indeed, that one wonders whence
so much can come . It often contains undigested food, and is
very offensive to the smell, having sometimes the odour of
carrion .”
Dr. Searle might have mentioned Apis, Nuphar, and Rumex
as additional analogues to Podophyllum in respect of morning
diarrhea. In its general action it resembles Colchicum , Iris,
Leptandra, and Mercurius.
The third attenuation of Podophyllin seems to give us all
its strictly homeopathic applications.
My second medicine is the meadow anemone , pasque flower,
or wind flower

Pulsatilla .
It was the P. nigricans which was introduced into medicine
by Stoerck , and proved by Hahnemann. But the American
species has been found, as we shall see, to possess similar
properties; and chemical research has discovered that the
P. pratensis also contains the active principle of the plant,
anemonin. So, except as there is difference in strength , it
 652 PULSATILLA .

seems immaterial which kind of Pulsatilla is used. The

Pharmacopæial tincture is made from the entire plant.
The pathogenesis of Pulsatilla is in the second volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 1153 symptoms, all
except about aa hundred of which are Hahnemann's own, the
remainder being supplied by five provers and a few authors.
Hahnemann states that his own symptoms were obtained from
very moderate doses, and are therefore primary effects of the
drug. He has bestowed great attention upon the pathogenesis,
annotating it freely, and pointing out the connection of the
various symptoms. For an excellent commentary on these I
may refer you to Dr. Carroll Dunham's “ Remarks on Pulsa
tilla ,” which you will find in the fifteenth volume of the
Monthly Homoeopathic Review . The American species - Pul
satilla Nuttalliana — has lately been proved by Dr. Burt. You
may read his experiments in the second edition of the Nero
Remedies : they include observations on two women .
Pulsatilla was one of the plants introduced into medicine
by the celebrated Baron Störck . He found it very useful in
chronic affections of the eyes, as cataract, spots on the cornea ,
and amaurosis ; in secondary syphilis ; and in cutaneous dis
eases . It has fallen into entire disuse in the old school ; and,
though homeopathy has preserved it in full employment, its
provings and small doses have not led to these applications of
the drug. But an American allopathic physician, Dr. W. H.
Miller, of S. Paul's, Minnesota, using the native variety in full
doses, has obtained the same results. It will be for us to
consider how far we can follow his practice with advantage.
Little was known of the physiological action of Pulsatilla
until Hahnemann proved it. Some German therapeutists
( quoted by Dr. Hale) speak of its causing, in over -doses,
nausea and vomiting, slimy diarrhea , profuse and offensive
sweats, vesicular and pustular eruptions, coryza and cough,
increased urinary flow , and peculiar pains and dimness of the
eyes. But the homeopathic provings show that, besides these
affections of the mucous membranes and the eyes, Pulsatilla
 PULSATILLA . 653

exerts much influence on the synovial membranes, the veins,

the ears, and the generative organs of both sexes.
1. In the mucous membranes Pulsatilla sets up the catar
rhal process. The dry stage is short and little marked (except
sometimes in the respiratory tract) :: and much mucous secre
tion is the rule. As symptoms of this condition the patho
genesis gives us - in the alimentary canal, raw throat, coated
tongue, furred mouth, fætid smell of the breath, taste deadened
or variously altered (bitter, sour, salt, even putrid ), foul or
acid eructations, nausea and inclination to vomit, sensation as
if the stomach were spoiled, weight and pressure in the
stomach, and mucous diarrhea ; in the respiratory tract green
or yellow discharge from the nose, and cough with much
expectoration * ( often tasting salt or bitter ) ; in the urinary
mucous membrane frequent micturition with tenesmus, and
jelly - like sediment in the urine.
2. Pulsatilla seems to fall just short of the true serous
membranes, but compensates itself by acting powerfully upon
their near relatives, the synovial membranes. The joints
chiefly affected are the knees, the ankles, and the small joints
of the hands and (most especially ) the feet. The rheumatico
gouty action thus displayed is also manifested in pains of
divers kinds in the nape of the neck and the extremities.
3. The veins seem to lose their vital resistance under the
action of Pulsatilla ; so that varicosis readily occurs, especially
in the rectum .
4. Pulsatilla manifests its affinity for the eyes mainly by
affecting the lids, which it inflames greatly, causing them to
be agglutinated in the morning, and to pour out quantities of
mucus . It causes also, however, considerable aching pain in
the eyeballs, and many disturbances of vision. Temporary ob
>

scurations of sight often occur ; fiery circles or haloes are seen ;

and after sleep there is a feeling as if something were hanging
The dry cough of Pulsatilla I am disposed, from clinical experience,
to set down as sympathetic, i. e. as a “stomach cough.”
654 PULSATILLA.

over the cornea which could be wiped away . The sensation is

only subjective, and disappears spontaneously.
5. The ears suffer from the action of Pulsatilla even more
than do the eyes. In some provers the concha and external
meatus were inflamed, with purulent discharge. In others
deafness, generally with noises of various kinds, was present.
The seat of the latter symptoms is indicated by Dr. Burt,
who suffered from “ snapping noises in the ear,” and
“ drawing pains along the right Eustachian tube.” Others
yet suffered from mere pain in the ear, generally of a jerking
character.
6. The action of Pulsatilla upon the generative organs of
both sexes is very marked, but is not easy to define. The
pathogenetic symptoms of its action in this sphere are, in the
female, contractive pains of the uterus, leucorrhæa of various
kinds, and scanty, delayed, and often painful menses. The
abdominal pains are too vaguely described to enable us to
discern any irritation of the ovaries : but their analogues in
the male, the testes, swell up and become painful ; the sper.
matic cord also being involved .
The febrile condition which accompanies most of these
ailments is marked by predominant chilliness.
This is the best outline I can give you of the physiological
action of Pulsatilla . It has little interest in itself, being
hardly capable of a rational exposition ; but it is amply avail.
able for therapeutic applications. Before, however, I turn to
these, let me cite some of Hahnemann's remarks upon the
symptoms of the drug. Of certain of the pains caused by
Pulsatilla, he says, that they are “ a short -lasting drawing
tension , which always terminates in a darting analogous to
tearing, somewhat as if a nerve were put upon the stretch, and
then let loose again suddenly, causing a painful jerk.” Of
others he says that they feel as if there were an internal ulcer
present. Of all save these he notes that they are relieved by
pressure. He points out, moreover, that its symptoms are
generally worst when at rest and in a warm room, while they
 PULSATILLA . 655

are relieved by motion in the open air ; and that they tend
to appear on one side only of the body.
Hahnemann also has done much to fix for us the character
and temperament to which Pulsatilla best corresponds. « The
medicinal employment of the drug,” he says, “ will be the
more salutary when, in the maladies to which this plant cor
responds as regards bodily evils, there is at the same time a
timorous, fearful state of mind and tendency to inward de
pression and quiet grief, or at least to passiveness and
resignation, especially if in health the patient was kindly and
pleasant (or even of light and changeable disposition ). It
therefore especially suits the lymphatic constitution, and is
consequently but little appropriate to men quick at their
course of action and energetic in their movements, even though
they appear kindly disposed." He gives, moreover, as indica
tions for it - frequent chilliness, absence of thirst, retarded
menstruation, long delay in getting to sleep, and the aggrava
tion of the symptoms towards evening. Teste adds, as regards
constitution , that it is a particularly suitable to persons who,
by the relative predominance of the adipose tissue in their
composition, by the whiteness of their flesh, the roundness
of their forms, the mildness of their disposition, and their
fitful moods, exhibit all the marked features of the female
sex. ”
I see no reason for supposing that Pulsatilla has any gene
ral influence upon the nervous system or upon the blood. I
shall arrange its therapeutic virtues under the headings
already adopted for the physiological outline.
1. Pulsatilla plays an important part in gastric disorders.
In dyspepsia, whether acute or chronic, the prominence of
mucous derangement- i. e. white tongue, nausea with little
vomiting, and absence of much pain - indicates this medicine
in preference to others, such as Nux vomica.* The tongue
* There is a good case illustrating its action here by Dr. Marston in the
twelfth volume of the Monthly Homeopathic Review , following upon a
differential diagnosis between this medicine and Nux.
656 PULSATILLA .

calling for Pulsatilla is thickly coated with a white roughish

fur, very different from the milky white of Antimonium
crudum , or the yellowish brown of Kali bichromicum . The
acute dyspepsia in which Pulsatilla is curative generally arises
from the indigestion of fat or other rich food , as the pork
specified by Hahnemann . In chronic gastric disorder it does
better when heart-burn than when water -brash is present, in
which it again contrasts with Nux. But Dr. Marston says
that when the fluid of water -brash is sour or foul tasted Pulsa
tilla is quite equal to its removal. Dr. Bayes considers the
drug specially indicated in dyspepsia by a great feeling of
tightness after a meal , so that the clothes must be removed or
loosened. The diarrhæa for which Pulsatilla is suitable is a
passive mucous flux, with little pain, occurring chiefly at
night. These gastro -intestinal symptoms are often present
in the febrile affections of childhood , as in mumps and vari
cella ; and a few doses of Pulsatilla are useful accordingly.
In two of these diseases our medicine is indispensable, viz.
measles and remittent fever. Having no control over the
fever itself - which requires in the former case Aconite, in the
latter Gelseminum — it aids powerfully to recovery by clean
ing the tongue and ( in measles) checking the diarrhea and
moderating the catarrh. Pulsatilla has less influence when
the respiratory mucous membrane is affected . Nevertheless
it is often a valuable palliative in nocturnal coughs, as of
phthisis ; and is sometimes the best medicine in subacute
and chronic bronchitis occurring in delicate persons, and ac
companied with much mucous expectoration . Dr. Hirschel
says that it is specific for a cough which is loose by day, but
becomes dry and tickling on lying down at night. So in dis
orders of the urinary tract Pulsatilla is far less frequently
indicated than Cantharis, Cannabis, and Belladonna : yet is
sometimes useful for the dysuria of pregnancy, and for chronie
catarrh of the bladder.
2. The action of Pulsatilla upon the joints has led to its
use in suitable forms of gout and rheumatism . The disorder
 PULSATILLA . 657

of digestion which lies at the foundation of gout is just that

to which Pulsatilla corresponds. Hence it is well calculated
to effect radical benefit in recent cases of this malady . In the
paroxysm itself it is generally superseded by Colchicum ;
though I know of one case in which the timely administration
of Pulsatilla has several times seemed to blight an incipient
attack . It is said to be indicated especially when the pains.
fly from place to place. In subacute rheumatism with little
or no fever occurring in delicate persons it is extremely useful,
especially when the knees, ankles, or small joints of the hands
and feet are affected . In idiopathic inflammations of these
joints, moreover, Pulsatilla is the best remedy while the mis
chief is yet recent. But perhaps the form of arthritis to
which Pulsatilla most closely corresponds is rheumatic gout,
using this term to signify the independent malady so named .
Dr. Fuller has pointed out the much preponderating frequency
with which the female sex is invaded by this disorder, and its
intimate relations with menstrual derangements. Pulsatilla
is almost specific in its acute form ; and even in chronic cases
may sometimes be given with advantage.
3. In affections of the veins Pulsatilla occupies much the
same ground as Hamamelis. It is superior to that medicine
in crural phlebitis following parturition, but yields to it in
venous hæmorrhages. In piles and other varicoses — as of the
spermatic cord or the lower extremity - Pulsatilla will act
well when the general condition of the patient seems to call
for its use. It is recommended even in dilatation of the right
ventricle.
4. It was for diseases of the eyes, as I have said, that Pul
satilla was first brought prominently forward by Störck. The
more modest claims to service here warranted by our experi
ments can be amply sustained. Pulsatilla is most useful in
affections of the lids. In recent blepharophthalmia , with
profuse lachrymation and meibomian secretion, it is the best
medicine. It will blight a stye almost as effectually as Bella
donna will a boil : but it will not prevent their tendency to
658 PULSATILLA .

recur . For the twitching of the eyelids, with dazzling of

sight, with which some persons are annoyed, I know no remedy
so useful as Pulsatilla . The aching of the eyeballs produced
by Pulsatilla is rather such as occurs in some forms of head.
ache than an idiopathic affection . For a further presentation
of what Pulsatilla can do in diseases of the eye I may refer
you to a paper by Dr. George Norton in the Hahnemannian
Monthly for January, 1876. He commends it in ophthalmia
neonatorum , and even in strumous ophthalmia where the dis
charge is profuse and bland, and there is not much photo
phobia.
5. Few medicines are used in our practice in affections of
the ears more frequently than Pulsatilla. Its curative virtues
are most evident in the ear -ache which so often troubles chil.
dren, and which is generally a subacute inflammation of the
middle ear ; and in recent catarrhal deafness, with noises in
the ears. But it has also been used with good results in acute
inflammation of the auricle and meatus, in neuralgia of the
nerves of the ear, and in non - scrofulous otorrhæa with deaf.
ness, when the discharge is thick .
6. I now come to what is perhaps the most important sphere
of the operation of Pulsatilla ,-the generative organs of both
sexes . In the male subject you will find it invaluable in acute
orchitis however caused ; and in prostatitis (with Thuja ). It
is one of the medicines (with Graphites and Rhododendron )
which have cured hydrocele. But its fullest powers are dis
played in the female organism . When in girls of mild dis
position puberty is unduly delayed, or the menstrual function
is defectively and irregularly performed : when they grow
pale and languid, and couplain of headache, chilliness, and
lassitude, Pulsatilla (with or without Ferrum ) is a most er.
cellent remedy. When the menses have been suppressed by a
chill , if the time for Aconite has gone by, Pulsatilla will gene
rally restore the discharge. This property of the drug Störck
had indicated. I believe it to be as good a remedy for ovaritis
as it is for orchitis ; and far superior to most of those ordi.
 PULSATILLA . 659

narily recommended. In simple mucous leucorrhea it is often

curative ; and in dysmenorrhoea when the little blood which
flows is black and coagulated, and when dysenteric diarrhea
is wont to occur at the periods. It presides in a most bene
ficial manner over the function of parturition. Given daily
for a month or so previously, it greatly facilitates the process
in women whose labours are tedious and difficult. In labour
itself, when the pains are irregular, tardy, and defective, yet
Ergot is hardly called for, Pulsatilla will often do good ser.
vice . And there are several cases recorded which leave little
doubt but that in false presentations Pulsatilla favours
spontaneous version; which, it must be remembered, sometimes
occurs of itself, and may therefore well be aided by a specific
medicine. After labour, it is very useful in promoting the
secretion of milk, when this is deficient. Altogether, the
weaker sex has much for which to thank homeopathy in its
gift of Pulsatilla.
Dr. Bayes, whose article on Pulsatilla is one of the best in
his book, speaks of its predominating action on the left side
of the body, and recommends it accordingly in clavus, hemi
crania, and infra -mammary pain having this seat. He also
advises it in constitutional disturbance in children associated
with copious excretion of urate of ammonia in the urine, an
experience which I have often confirmed .
Pulsatilla , like the polychrests generally, has no true
analogue. The medicines which most frequently come up
for comparison with it in practice are Actæa, Antimonium
crudum, Car:lophyllum , Conium , Cyclamen, Hamamelis, and
Sabina .
Again like the polychrests generally, Pulsatilla requires to
be given in various potencies to obtain all its virtues. I have
no experience with the mother-tincture or first dilutions,
though with the former Dr. Phillips seems to get all the good
effects of the medicine. But I can recommend to you the
3rd decimal in gastric disorders and orchitis, the 3rd cente
660 PULSATILLA .

simal in affections of the eyes and ears, and in rheumatism :

while the 6th and 12th I believe to be best suited for gout,
for affections of the veins, and for ovario -uterine disturb
ances .
 LECTURE XXXVII.

RANUNCULUS, RATANHIA, RHEUM, RHODODENDRON , RHUS,

RUMEX , RUTA .

We shall be able to dispose of all the drugs beginning

with the letter R to -day. They are a succession of vegetable
medicines of various degrees of importance.
The first will be the several varieties of Ranunculus. Two
of these, Ranunculus bulbosus and sceleratus, have received
a very fair proving. As I see no essential difference between
their properties, I shall treat of them indiscriminately here
under the title of

Ranunculus.
The tincture of either variety is prepared from the whole
plant.
The provings appear in Stapf's Additions. That of
Ranunculus bulbosus was undertaken by Dr. Franz and two
others (one being a woman ), all using full doses of the pure
tincture. Ranunculus sceleratus was proved on himself, in
the same form , by an anonymous physician.
The Ranunculi are intensely irritant when applied locally,
causing inflammation and vesication , with burning itching.
It is not evident from the provings whether this effect — 80
much resembling that of Rhus - is, as with that medicine,
dynamic and specific in nature. No eruptions were developed
by them, though there was a good deal of subjective cutaneous
irritation. The most characteristic and lasting effects of
both were exerted upon the walls of the chest. The symptoms
from the 175th to the 212th of Ranunculus bulbosus, and
43
662 RANUNCULUS .

from the 117th to the 138th of Ranunculus sceleratus are

composed almost entirely of the various kinds of pain and
soreness experienced by the provers in the sternum , ribs, and
intercostal spaces .
Correspondingly, the Ranunculi have been used with the
utmost success in pleurodynia, whether rheumatic, * neuralgic,t
or myalgic. I cannot à priori diagnose for you their place
in these maladies as compared with that of Actæa racemosa
and of Arnica : you must be guided by the accompanying
symptoms. I know of no other standing uses of Ranun .
culus. I once treated a case of chronic dysentery in a
domestic servant accompanied by infra -mammary pain on
both sides. After a fruitless trial of Mercurius corrosivus
and Kali bichromicum , I was led by the pains to give Ranun
culus bulbosus in the third dilution . Under its use , the
intestinal symptoms rapidly subsided, and the pain dis
appeared from the left side, but persisted in the right, from
which it was at length dislodged by Nux vomica. Two or
three returns of the malady have been rapidly checked by
the same drug.
In conclusion, Ranunculus should be borne in mind in some
cases of sciatica, and other rheumatic neuralgiæ : also in
herpes and eczema. It ought to be a very efficient medicine
for shingles, covering as it does the intercostal neuralgia as
well as the eruption. Dr. Markwick says he finds it very
useful here. Dr. Bayes praises it in pleurisy and hydrothorar
of the right side.
Rhus, Clematis, Euphorbium , Croton, Mezereum , Sabadilla,
and Staphysagria are analogues of Ranunculus.
The dilutions from 1 to 3 seem to have been generally
used.

And now a few words about a medicine which you know

* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 160 ; ii , 274.
† Ibid ., ii, 274 .
I Monthly Hom . Review , x, 752 ; Bayes, sub voce.
§ Ibid ., xv, 64.
 RHEUM . 663

only as an astringent, and do not often use even in that

capacity, the Krameria root,
Ratanhia ,
The tincture is prepared from the dried root.
There is a pathogenesis of Ratanbia in the third volume
of Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre. Some additional
symptoms are furnished by Teste, in his article on the drug.
I can give no general account of the symptoms ascribed
to Ratanhia . One of them only, so far as I know, has led
to practical results,— " sensation as of a skin before the
9)
eyes.” Acting on this very slight hint, Dr. Madden tried
it in a case of pterygium, and with success. I have myself
used it with curative results in three cases of this disease
one in the human subject , and two in the lower animals (a
dog and a cat respectively ) . Several other cases of success
with it have appeared in the Monthly Homeopathic Revier
during the last few years.
Another symptom of Ratanbia, “ dry neat at the anus, with
sudden stitches which the patient compares to stabs with a
penknife,” makes it possible that it is somewhat homoeopathic
to the fissure of the anus which the French physicians profess
to cure with it . Teste recommends it in uterine pains
following retrocession of an eruption situated on the lumbar
region.
I can say nothing about medicines allied to Ratanhia.
For dose I have always used the second dilution ; but the
first decimal has been employed with benefit.
And now we come to an old enemy of the childhood of most
of us - happily unknown, as a drug, to our own children
Rhubarb, Latiné Rhabarbarum , or
Rheum .
Our tincture is made, like the common one, from the dry
root.
664 RHODODENDRON CHRYSANTHUM .

The pathogenesis of Rheum is in the second volume of the

Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 194 symptoms from
Hahnemann and five others, and 14 from authors. It was
also one of the medicines tested by the Vienna Provers'
Society ; whose results you may read in the sixth volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy, or in Hempel.
None of these provings add anything of import to the
knowledge previously existing of the action of Rhubarb on
the alimentary canal. Of this Hahnemann writes :-“It is not
an easy , liquid, and copious stool, or a painless diarrhea,
which is the primary action of Rhubarb on the bowels, but
rather a colicky and sometimes ineffictual urging to altered
evacuations, which are nevertheless always fæcal.” To the
same effect is the testimony of all therapeutists. Rhubarb
is considered to stimulate the muscular fibre of the whole
length of the intestine, purging without causing serous effusion,
and never - however far its action may go - inflaming the
mucous membrane. Dr. Rutherford has ascertained that, like
Podophyllum , it increases both the liquid and the solid ele
ments of the bile. The constipation which often follows the
purgation of Rhubarb seems due to an after action of the
tannin it contains.
A corresponding form of diarrhea is occasionally met
with, especially in children : a sour smell has been found
characteristic of it, and was noticed by Gross in the course of
his proving. When this morbid condition occurs, Rheum
from the second to the sixth dilution - will give you every
satisfaction ; and you will feel glad that you can use it to
remove children's troubles instead of to cause them .
My next medicine is the beautiful Siberian rose,
Rhododendron chrysanthum .
The dried leaves and flower -buds are the officinal portion of
the plant.
A proving of Rhododendron, conducted by Dr. Seidel on
 RHUS . 065

himself and several others with moderate doses of the mother

tincture, is given in Stapf's Additions.
The most characteristic symptoms of Rhododendron are
the pains which it excites in the muscular and fibrous tissues,
and the swelling and tenderness of the testes and epididymis.
In practice it has been found useful accordingly. It has a
high native reputation for gout and rheumatism ; and homæo .
pathic experience shows it to be specifically curative in many
forms of these maladies. It seems especially serviceable in
rheumatism of the cervical and thoracic muscles, and in
rheumatic neuralgia of the extremities. The pains are worse
at rest, and in cloudy and stormy weather . I have myself
used Rhododendron with much benefit, acting on a hint from
German experience, in rheumatic face -ache. * Relief of pain
during and after eating seems characteristic of it. Chronic
affections of the testes — as orchitis and hydrocele — have also
been frequently cured by Rhododendron.
The stools characteristic of this drug are loose, but requiring
much pressure for their expulsion.
Rhus and Clematis, and perhaps Ranunculus, are analogues
of Rhododendron. The diagnostic marks between it and
Rhus are fully given in the second volume of the American
Journal of Homoeopathic Materia Medica (p. 247) .
The dilutions from 12 to 30 were given in the cases which
Dr. Seidel prefixes to his pathogenesis ; but in rheumatic
prosopalgia my experience is that of the German physicians,
who prefer the 1st and 2nd decimal.
I have now to introduce you to the medicine, which , what
ever the species of the plant we use, is known as
Rhus.
Under this name we include the Rhus toxicodendron, the
sumach, or poison oak ; Rhus radicans, the poison ivy or
vine ; and Rhus venenata, the poison wood or ash . The last,
by the way , must not be confounded (as it sometimes is) with
See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxvii, 149.
666 RHUS .

the Rhus vernis of Linnæus, which grows in Japan . The

leaves of the two former species, and the juice which exudes
from incisions in the bark of the Rhus venenata, are used to
make their tinctures .
Rhus toxicodendron was proved by Hahnemann. The second
volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre contains a pathogenesis
of 976 symptoms, of which more than half are his own, the
remainder being supplied by nine fellow -provers and some
authors. Rhus radicans was proved by Dr. Joslin and ten
others : the only record of his experiments with which I am
acquainted is that contained in Jahr's Symptomen Codex . The
effects of Rhus venenata have been very fully ascertained by
Drs. Burt, Hoyt, and Oehme, both by taking the drug inter
nally and by exposing themselves to contact with its juice or
emanations ; as you may read in Dr. Hale's pages.
The poisonous influence of the juice of all the sumachs has
been found to reside in a volatile acid which it contains.
Hence exposure to the emanations has almost as potent an
effect as actual contact with the juice. I will describe the
results of either in the words of the present Lecturer on
Materia Medica at the Westminster Hospital :
“ The effects produced by Rhus are redness and swelling of
the affected parts, which, if the exhalations be the exciting
eause, are more particularly the face and eyes. Subsequently
there is pain, and often a considerable increase of tempera
ture, and the inflamed surface is generally studded with
vesicles. Combined with these symptoms, there is an almost
unbearable amount of itching, which is not confined to the
patches of inflammation, but diffuses itself, more or less, over
the entire surface of the body, the hairy portions appearing
to be very specially affected. The condition induced thus
appears to be of an erythematous or erysipelatous type. It
is superficial, but spreads rapidly over the surface, and
speedily involves large areas of the body ; eventually er .
tending to the mucous membranes, as indicated by redness
and swelling of the throat and mouth , with, ordinarily, great
 RHUS . 667

thirst, irritable cough, nausea , vomiting, vertigo, dulness and

stupefaction of head, and colicky pains throughout the abdo
men. These last are chiefly experienced during the night,
and are aggravated by eating or drinking. Diarrhoea fre
quently ensues, accompanied by tenesmus, and the stools are
often bloody. There is often retention of the urine, or
else diuresis, and the water is frequently accompanied by
blood .
“ Rhus also induces pains, apparently of a rheumatic kind,
and which are felt not only in the limbs but in the body,
though most especially about the joints. Pain and stiffness
in the lumbar region are often induced, and to these affections
is often added a sense of numbness in the lower extremities .
The structures most powerfully affected appear to be the
fibrous ones. The pains in question are accompanied by a
very slight amount of swelling ; and, singular to say, they
become intensified by rest and warmth . Sleep is greatly
disturbed, the patient becoming restless, constantly turning
about, and often suffering from great nervous depression.
“ The fever which sometimes accompanies the effects of
Rhus, though by no means an universal symptom , usually
occurs, when present, in the later stages, and generally par
takes of a typhoid character. It is often attended by
delirium ; the lips are apt to become dry and parched, and to
be covered with a brownish crust. Sometimes it assumes an
intermittent character, and is then usually marked by profuse
perspiration.
“ The above- described effects of Rhus, though so distress
ing to whoever may have to endure them, appear, however, to
be very seldom fatal ; and it is remarkable that a certain
constitutional predisposition appears requisite to their
occurrence, so that it is only individuals who are in danger.
Were it otherwise, a plant so common in its native country
as the present would be a perpetual source of trouble to the
persons dwelling near. I have myself witnessed several
instances of the poisonous influence, and can personally vouch
668 RIIUS .

for the manifestation of nearly all the phenomena that have

been indicated .”
I have thought it well to cite this account from an authority
not partial to the homeopathic doctrine, as I shall have to
show that the efficacy of Rhus as a medicine is displayed in the
very regions in which it is so active as a poison. We shall
see it as a remedy for many cutaneous affections, for rheum
atism , and for typhoid conditions of several kinds.
I. The action of Rhus on the skin is obviously of a very
acute and specific kind. Teste well describes it as that of “ a
corrosive caustic, which, from its extreme subtilty, has a ten
dency to invade large surfaces, rather than to penetrate deeply
into tissues.” He compares it with Arnica, which dips deeper
down ; and with Ledum, whose influence is more localised .
Severe boils followed the primary symptoms in two of the
provers of Rhus venenata . An additional value for homæo
pathic purposes is given to these effects by the fact mentioned
by Dr. Phillips, that they only occur in a certain number of
those who are exposed to the influence of the plant, i.e., they
are contingent upon special susceptibility. Dufresnoy, more.
over, states that persons, not constitutionally susceptible to
the disorders induced by Rhus as a poisonous agent, are not
so likely to receive benefit from it if used as a medicine. It
points in the same direction when we hear from Trousseau
and Pidoux of the symptoms first appearing twenty -five days
after inoculation with the juice, and from Fontana of their
recurrence at intervals subsequently.
Correspondingly, in cutaneous affections, especially when
acute, Rhus naturally takes high rank as a remedy. The
members of the order Vesiculæ - herpes (especially h. zoster),
eczema, and pemphigus - are the forms of eruption to which
it is most suitable. I have frequently cured these affections
with Rhus, and indeed rarely require any other remedy for
them . Itching with burning is a characteristic indication for
it here. Dr. Dunhamn recommends it in eczema impetiginodes,
and Dr. Wesselhæft has communicated cases of prurigo
 RHUS . 669

senilis and vulvæ cured by it.* Still more closely do the

effects of Rhus correspond with erythema and erysipelas.
When this latter malady goes on to the formation of vesicles
and bullæ (vesicular erysipelas) Rhus is the standard remedy
among homeopathists ; and I have often seen it act here in
the most beautiful manner . Teste seems justified in recom
mending it as the best medicine to be given in extensive but
superficial burns.
It was the accidental cure of an old herpetic eruption by
the development of the cutaneous symptoms of Rhus poison
ing that led to its first introduction into medicine, by Dufresnoy
of Valenciennes . His memoir on the subject (of which you
may read a full account in the twenty - eighth volume of the
British Journal of Homeopathy ) relates several cases of a
similar kind in which he gave the drug internally with
distinguished success. Like so many other valuable pieces of
practice, however, this use of Rhus had perished in the old
school, but has been maintained in homeopathy, to which it
legitimately belongs.
II. The rheumatoid pains described by Dr. Phillips as
occurring in Rhus poisoning are seen in an especial degree in
the provers of the drug. From Rhus venenata the joints, as
well as the fibrous tissues, were affected — especially the knees,
ankles, feet, and hands ; but there was no genuine synovial
swelling, as with Bryonia and Pulsatilla. It is chiefly to
these rheumatoid pains that Hahnemann's well-known ob
servation belongs, that, unlike those of Bryony, they are most
violent when the part affected is in a state of perfect rest.
He extends the statement, indeed , to the symptoms produced
by the drug generally ; and the recent provings of Rhus
venenata support his statement.
Rhus has thus come to occupy a high place in homeopathic
therapeutics amongst the remedies for rheumatism . It is not
often indicated in rheumatic fever. It would be so where, as
in a case mentioned by Dr. Bayes, restlessness and constant
* See Brit Journ . of Hom ., xxxii, 563.
670 RHUS .

desire to change the position were present. Dr. Phillips also

says that “ in the after stage of acute rheumatic fever, when
aconite may have been employed, and when the temperature
has fallen to 100°, or below it, and where the patient still
suffers from wearing stiffness, and aching in the neighbour
hood of the joints, rhus is positively invaluable.” But in
various subacute and chronic rheumatic affections it is a
most precious remedy. Its action is mainly, if not entirely,
upon the fibrous tissues — tendons, fasciæ , sheaths of nerves,
& c . — and perhaps the muscles . I do not think that it con
trols the rheumatic affections of the synovial membranes, but
only those of the ligaments external to the capsules of the
joints. Nor do I think that it acts upon the nerves them
selves. Its undoubted value in rheumatic sciatica * depends, I
take it, upon its influence on the fibrous sheath of the nerve,
which is so often the seat of the pain . It is powerless in pure
neuralgia here or elsewhere. It is certainly the best remedy
in most cases of lumbago, after Aconite : - I suspect that here
'the lumbar fascia is the part affected rather than the actual
muscles. In rheumatic lameness of the lower extremities,
depending largely upon the state of the fascia lata, Rhus has
made brilliant cures.t - In all these maladies the characteristie
features, “worse at rest, relieved by motion , ” are of immense
weight in determining our choice of Rhus. Dr. Neidhard has
added the important observation that on first moving after
rest the pains are increased. It is not until the parts have
been removed for some little time that relief ensues. With
Bryony, on the other hand, the longer the movement con
tinues, the worse the pains become; and with Rhododendron,
movement relieves from the first. Dr. Carroll Dunbam has
drawn out these characteristics of the pains of Rhus in a
very interesting manner, in some observations on the drug
which you will find in the fifteenth volume of the Monthly
Homoeopathic Review . “ The rheumatic symptoms of the drug,"
See case in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xi, 146.
+ See Ibid ., xxv, 661.
 RHUS . 671

he says , “come on with severity during repose, and they

increase as long as the patient remains quiet, until, at length,
their severity compels him to move. Now, on first attempting
to move, he finds himself very stiff, and the very first move
ment is exceedingly painful. But as he continues to move,
however, the stiffness is relieved and the pains decidedly
decrease, the patient feeling much better. " He goes on to
point out that this improvement does not continue indefi
nitely ; for weariness readily comes on in such patients, and
then rest is at first grateful, only after aa while to be disturbed
by a recurrence of the aching pain.
The action of Rhus on the white fibrous tissues has led to
its being used in the treatment of sprains. Hahnemann says,
_ “ I have recognised in these latter years that Rhus is the
best specific against the consequences of muscular strains and
contusions.” He does not say what relation it bears to Arnica
here; nor do I know that general experience has found it
superior or even equal to that medicine.
III. The fever of Rhus poisoning is at first sympathetic
with the dermatitis that is set up. But later here, as pointed
out by Dr. Phillips, and perhaps primarily (as suggested by
the provings) from the internal use of the drug, a febrile con
dition of low and nervous type is set up, with diarrhea and
prostration. Hahnemann was led thereby to use Rhus as a
principal remedy for the epidemic fever which ravaged Ger
many in 1813. Whether it was true typhus, or (as Dr. Russell
thinks) relapsing fever, is doubtful: but this at least is certain,
that while the mortality under the ordinary treatment was
considerable, Hahnemann treated 183 patients without a single
death . * He also recommended it, in alternation with Bryonia ,
in the consecutive fever of cholera.t
Rhus has accordingly taken rank as an important anti
typhoid remedy in homeopathic practice. Drs. Wurmb and
Caspar, from their experience in the Leopoldstadt Hospital at
* Lesser Writings, p . 712.
+ Ibid ., p. 847.
672 RHUS ,

Vienna, define its place in typhus and enteric fever. It cor

responds, they say, to an erethistic type of the malady, such
as, when more severe, requires Arsenic . Dr. Dunham points
out that a corresponding condition is apt to supervene in the
course of measles * and scarlatina ; and that here Rhus is no
less indicated and beneficial. In the latter disease, he says,
it is still more strongly called for “ if there be an ædematous
condition of the fauces, soft palate, and uvula , with vesicles
upon these parts, and a singularly annoying itching, smarting,
and burning." Epidemics of influenza sometimes present this
condition of the throat, with great debility ; and here also
Rhus is remedial.
Another variety of scarlatina in which I have much confi.
dence in Rhus is that in which rheumatic symptoms appear.
I speak of the “scarlatina rheumatica ” of this country ; but
I should think the remedy equally applicable to the epidemic
disease which sometimes bears this name — the “ dengue ” of
America and the Indies. I would suggest the Rhus venenata
here, on account of the implication of the mucous membrane
of the mouth and throat, which is seen most prominently in
the pathogenesis of this variety. On this account I gave it
once, and with much success, in a relapse of Ceylon fever in a
patient lately returned from that island.
These cutaneous, rheumatic, and febrile disorders form the
main sphere of action of Rhus in homeopathic practice. Of
its anti-paralytic virtues we have not, perhaps, sufficiently
availed ourselves. Dufresnoy first brought these to light by
accident. Giving the medicine for a hemiplegia , under the
supposition that it was caused by a repelled eruption, he cured
his patient, though mistaken as to the origin of the malady.
He therefore gave it in other paralytic affections, often with
benefit; and his practice was followed with the same results
by Alderson in England. Improvement, as with Collin's use
of Arnica, was generally preceded by pains and other sensa
tions in the affected parts. It is doubtful whether Rhus acts
* See case in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., Xxx , 587.
 RHUS . 673

homeopathically here. The paralytic symptoms of its patho

genesis are rather those of general prostration than of special
depression of the motor centres ; and the only recorded
experience of its value in the school of Hahnemann is that
of Trinks, who gave it in increasing doses of the mother
tincture. The paralysis in all these cases is described as
painless. But there is a paralytic condition which is far from
being painless, viz. the rheumatic form ; and in the minute
doses commonly used by homeopathists it is here that Rhus
has been chiefly used . It often results from exposure of the
back or seat to damp cold. Dr. Dunham suggests that para
plegia occurring in young children is generally thus caused ;
and states that it readily yields to Rhus, and an occasional
dose of Sulphur. *
Rhus is, moreover, thoroughly homeopathic to affections of
the mucous membrane resembling those which it causes on
the cutaneous surface. The late Sir James Simpson has well
shown that conditions answering to erythema and eczema of
the skin are not uncommon on the lining membrane of the
bowels and other parts, especially in women. Rhus is also
beneficial in diarrhea and dysentery associated with low
general conditions, as typhus † and scorbutus. The mucous
membrane it influences most powerfully is the conjunctiva.
In the sixth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy
Dr. Dudgeon has collected numerous testimonies, from both
old and new schools, to its value in strumous ophthalmia.
Perhaps the phlyctenular character of the affection has some
thing to do with its usefulness here ; and it is noteworthy that
there is often an association of general eczema of the face.
When this occurs , Rhus is doubly indicated .
Several other facts about Rhus, and applications of it as a
medicine, may be gleaned from Dr. Dunham's study of the
drug, which I cannot too warmly commend to your notice.
His observation as to the acridity communicated by it to all the
* See case in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxviii , 793.
+ See Monihly Hom. Review , xvi, 733 .
674 RUMEX CRISPUS .

fluids and secretions of the body is especially worthy of

notice.
The medicines most allied to Rhus are Croton , Ranunculus,
Ledum , Rhododendron , and Bryonia .
In recent cutaneous affections I recommend the 6th dilu
tion : in chronic, from the 1st to the 3rd decimal, as also in
shingles and erysipelas. In chronic rheumatism the higher
dilutions seem to have made the best cures ; while in paralysis
and strumous ophthalmia the material doses of Old Medicine
have given the drug its reputation. Hahnemann says that
the action of Rhus is slow ; and that improvement is rarely
perceived (I hope he means in chronic cases) until thirty -six
hours after the administration of the dose ,

Once again we turn to America, as she sends us the yellow

dock,

Rumex crispus.
The fresh root is used in the preparation of the tincture .
The original proving of Rumex, by Dr. Joslin , is in the
second volume of the American Homeopathic Review. The
pathogenesis is given, with numerous clinical cases, in the
second edition of Dr. Hale's New Remedies. Several persons
took part in the provings , using both the tincture and the
dilutions .
Rumex has some influence on the skin and alimentary
mucous membrane, causing in the former an itching which is
increased by exposure to cool air, and relieved by warmth
(herein contrasting with that of Sulphur and Mercury), and
in the latter a sense of weight at the stomach, and a morning
diarrhæa. Its main action, however, is exerted upon the
respiratory mucous membrane, and especially that of the
larynx ; where it diminishes secretion while exalting sensi
bility. Hence changes in voice, and a dry titillating cough.
The action hardly goes on to inflammation.
Rumex has cured some cases of gastric and intestinal
 RUTA GRAVEOLENS. 675

derangement characterised as above, especially morning diar

rhea. It should be thought of in prurigo, where the itching
has the unusual characteristic of that excited by the drug.
Dr. Searle communicates to the third volume of the United
States Medical and Surgical Journal an account of the con
tagious prurigo, or “ army itch , " so frequently observed
during the late American war. After trying several ordinary
remedies in vain, he found Rumex crispus its specific. He
gave several drops of the first decimal dilution for aa dose.
But the chief use of Rumex is in laryngo -tracheal cough ,
of which quite an array of cases may be read in Dr. Hale's
article. The symptoms are those of catarrh , with excessive
irritability of the laryngo -tracheal mucous membrane, causing
a violent, incessant, and fatiguing cough, with little expectora
tion . Pressure, talking, and especially inspiration of cool
air, cause aggravation. There is often a sense of excoriation
behind the sternum . I have several times prescribed Rumex
with success in this kind of cough, but quite as often with
entire failure, though it seemed thoroughly indicated. When
it cures, it does so with almost magical rapidity.
The analogues of Rumex in the respiratory sphere are
stated by Dr. Carroll Dunham to be Lachesis, Belladonna,
Causticum , and Phosphorus. His sketch of the laryngeal
symptoms of the five medicines respectively (given by Dr.
Hale) is a model of delicate application and discriminate
comparison . I would add to his four analogues a fifth, Spongia .
In its relation to morning diarrhoea, Rumex corresponds to
Apis, Nuphar, Podophyllum , and Sulphur.
Nearly all the recorded cures have been made with the
dilutions from the 6th to the 30th .
My last medicine to - day is the ommon rue ,

Ruta graveolens.
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant, which should
be quite fresh .
The proving of Ruta is in the fourth volume of the Reine
676 RUTA GRAVEOLENS.

Arzneimittellehre. It contains 26 symptoms from Hahnemann,

259 from eight others, and 3 from authors.
“ Hardly any medicine," writes Stillé, “ was more frequently
employed of old, or with greater confidence in its virtues,
than this now neglected plant. ” Its poisonous action shows
it to be an acro -narcotic, with a special action upon the uterus.
This last has lately been studied by Dr. Hélie, of Nantes,
who finds it cause both active determination of blood to the
organ, and contraction of its muscular walls. Rue is thus
emmenagogue and abortifacient, which properties of the
plant have long been known and utilised in domestic, and to
some extent in professional, practice. We of course turn
them to account by giving Ruta , not in amenorrhea, but in
meno- and metrorrhagia ; and not to cause miscarriage, but to
avert it. In the former use of it we have the countenance of
an old - school celebrity, M. Beau of La Charité, who appears
quite unconscious of the homeopathicity of his practice.*
In Hahnemann's proving the chief symptoms elicited are
pains in the bones, joints, and cartilages, especially of a
“ bruised character. “ Ruta seems, " he remarks, " to
excite many pains in the bones or the periosteum .” It has
accordingly been used in the treatment of rheumatism ,
especially of the wrist and ankle ; and in bruises of the
periosteum . Dr. Henriques has published an interesting
case in which an ununited fracture in a cachectic patient
rapidly took on healing action under its influence.t The
tenesmus which the provings show it to cause in the rectum
and bladder - even to prolapse of the former - well correspond
to its action on the uterus, and should receive homoeopathic
application.
Yet another virtue of rue is its undoubted power in
dimness of vision caused by over-exertion of the eyes.
Hahnemann mentions it as commended by Rosenstein,
Swedjaur, and Chomel in this trouble, and points to S. 38,
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 343.
+ Ibid., x, 445.
 RUTA GRAVEOLENS . 677
9
and 39 in his “ Observations of Others," as showing that the
drug causes what it cures. A Hungarian physician ,
M. Elgâjaki, has lately drawn attention to the same double
series of facts. Ophthalmology has not yet ascertained for
us what is the precise pathological condition induced by Ruta
or removed by it ; and meanwhile we must content ourselves
with phenomenal indications. You will remember that it
was “ with euphrasy and rue” that Milton's angel purged
Adam's visual nerve, that he might see.
Crocus and Sabina in the uterine sphere, Mezereum and
Phytolacca in the locomotive organs, and perhaps Euphrasia in
the eyes, correspond to Ruta . M. Beau says that rue is to
savin what Ipecacuanha is to Tartar emetic.
The second dilution is recommended by Hahnemann . In
Dr. Henriques' case the twelfth was given.

44
 LECTURE XXXVIII.

SABADILLA , SABINA, SAMBUCUS, SANGUINARIA , SARRACENLA,

SARSAPARILLA , SCILLA , SECALE , SELENIUM , SENECIO ,
SENEGA, SEPIA.

The medicines beginning with the letter S, on which we

now enter, will occupy us a much longer time than those
which have R for their initial.
We will begin with the Indian barley,
Sabadilla .
A tincture and triturations are prepared from the dried
capsuled seeds as imported.
The proving of Sabadilla is in Stapf's Additions. It
appears to have been a thorough one , having been conducted
with the mother-tincture on upwards of eleven healthy
persons.
Sabadilla contains veratria, of which we shall speak when
we come to Veratrum album ; and, besides the virtues of that
alkaloid, it has acrid properties of its own. Its proving
exhibits many well-characterised symptoms, but it has been
very little employed in disease. Stapf writes : - " among the
many important and characteristic symptoms of Sabadilla
which every observing physician will easily recognise, the
Sabadilla fever is especially remarkable. Sabadilla is not
only a specific for a certain kind of very bad angina, and
to a rare kind of pleurisy (where no inflammatory fever or
thirst is present, and the patient complains of coldness mingled
with isolated flushes of heat) , but also for some forms of ague
 SABINA . 679

where the chilliness sets in with nausea and inclination to

vomit, recurs frequently, and sometimes alternates with flushes
of heat ; and where the heat is more perceptible in the face
and on the hands than on the rest of the body. There is
absence of thirst both in the cold and in the hot stage.” Dr.
Bayes communicates some unique experience with it in hay
fever, in which he regards it as of the greatest possible use .
“ The method,” he writes, “ I have found most serviceable for
its administration has been to order the olfaction of the third
decimal tincture several times a day, and the taking of one
drop two or three times a day in water. By this means I have
cured a number of severe cases, and have made many firm
converts to our system of medicine. ” He has also used it in
other cases of coryza, with severe frontal pains and redness of
the eyelids, with great benefit.
Sabadilla is aa medicine to which you will more frequently
be led by a repertory than by à priori knowledge of its action.
When , however, you are directed to it by its homeopathicity
to the morbid condition before you, you may employ it with
confidence.
Staphysagria and Veratrum album seem somewhat analogous
medicines .
We come next to a better known medicine in the shape of
savin , the Juniperus
Sabina.
The tincture is prepared from the fresh leaves and green
tops ; or from the oil distilled from the same, dissolved in
ether . It is not satisfactorily soluble in alcohol. Sometimes
the oil is triturated with sugar of milk.
The proving of this drug also is in Stapf's Additions. Ten
experimenters are mentioned ; but nothing is said about the
doses they took .
Savin is a general irritant, stimulating the circulation and
congesting the brain and lungs, and also inflaming the kidneys
by which it is eliminated, so that the urine becomes bloody and
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and (in preg.
nant women) abortion . This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way.* But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens the
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingly
exceptional. On the other hand, it is a most valuable
homoeopathically acting remedy for ovario - uterine excitement;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red, in metror.
rhagia , in threatened miscarriage from irritation , and in
metritis — in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect aa most satisfactory cure. The presence of con
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more .
over : for it is in “ hæmorrhagic metritis," " metritis accom .
panied by flooding,” that he gives it. One grain of the
powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe.
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of sym
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
what are vaguely called “ arthritic affections.” The connec
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
* See case in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 301 .
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. iii, p. 416 ). Recent therapeutists attempt to make out that it is
in atonic menorrhagia that Sabina is curative ; but M. Beau is against
them .
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

malady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

curative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna , Crocus
Pulsatilla , Ruta , and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th, and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra.
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture .
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura , containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others. The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted .
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena . * Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
eften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes :
_ " in the suffocating cough of children, waking them up in
the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing, and great dyspnoea, but without croup, I have
found small doses of Sambucus $g of the most rapid service .”
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures .
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
682 SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS .

The 1st decimal is the dilution I have used in diaphoresis

and asthma, and Hahnemann himself recommends the pure
juice to be given.
America again comes forward to furnish us with our next
medicine, the blood -root,
Sanguinaria Canadensis.
The tincture is prepared from the rhizoma.
There is a pathogenesis in the Materia Medica of American
Provings. Dr. Hale's article in his New Remedies should also
be consulted .
The physiological effects of Sanguinaria are not very
distinctly known. It seems to be a general irritant. It
comes to us from the botanic practitioners of America with
a high reputation in the treatment of affections of the respira
tory organs. It is said to have proved curative in homæ0
pathic practice in membranous croup andædematous laryngitis,
in chronic cough with hectic, and even in incipient phthisis.
Dr. Hale recommends it in the third stage of pneumonia
( grey hepatization ) ; and Dr. Drysdale also in pulmonary
abscess. * Then again Dr. C. Hering states that Sanguinaria
is the best medicine we have for recurring sick -headache.
Lastly, Dr. Gray of New York recommends it for the flushings
which are so annoying at the climacteric age.
I have myself tried Sanguinaria in all these conditions,
where the symptoms indicated it. My experience with it has
been on the whole satisfactory ; but I cannot yet assign its
exact place in relation to other medicines.
Dr. Hale compares Sanguinaria with Phosphorus and Lyco
podium :: to me Scilla seems its closest analogue.
Both high and very low dilutions seem to have been used
with advantage.
I would now say a few words upon the pitcher -plant,
* Monthly Hom . Review , x, 349.
 SARSAPARILLA . 683

Sarracenia purpurea.
A tincture of the root, or triturations of the whole dry
plant, seem the best preparations.
Provings of Sarracenia , instituted by three persons, with
substantial doses, are contained in the second edition of
Dr. Hale's New Remedies, and in the therapeutic portion of
the fourth edition you may read its clinical history.
Sarracenia came into medical practice some fifteen years
ago with a high repute among the American Indians as a
remedy for smallpox. Several English and American
practitioners reported most favourably of its virtues : it
seemed to promote eruption at first, but to check maturation
afterwards, so that unvaccinated subjects recovered as if they
had only had varioloid. Mr. Marston's trial of it at the Small
pox Hospital, however, proved unsuccessful; and it has
fallen out of use in the old school. Its homeopathic
provings showed a power of developing feverishness, with
pains in the bones and soreness of the limbs, not unlike
that with which variola sets in ; and Dr. Miracas in Spain, Dr.
Cigliano in Italy, and Dr. Mouremans in Belgium have
published reports of its use which seem to show it possessed
of no little efficacy. We need further experimentation to
fix its place in the treatment of this disease.
The dilutions from the 1st decimal to the 3rd centesimal
have been those in which Sarracenia has been used.
Next, of
Sarsaparilla ,
of which also triturations, or a tincture of the root, are
prepared in homeopathic pharmacy.
There is a pathogenesis of Sarsaparilla in the fourth
volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 34 symptoms
from Hahnemann , and 111 from four others. Nenning then
proved it for Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre, the
second volume of which contains 347 symptoms from him .
 684 SARSAPARILLA .

In the Chronic Diseases all these are incorporated, together

with some new symptoms from Schreter, making 561 in all.
An arrangement of these materials, with clinical observa
tions interspersed, appears in Dr. Hering's Materia Medica .
It has long been said in the old school that physicians despise
while surgeons swear by this medicine. Dr. Clifford Allbutt
has lately proved an exception to his class in this respect;
for he has come forward to show the benefits of the practice
followed in the Leeds Infirmary of giving Sarsaparilla in
iarge doses—from twelve ounces to a pint of the compound
decoction daily .张 * In this way he is able to benefit old
syphilitic patients whose condition would otherwise seem
hopeless— “ patients,” he says, “ whose constitutions have
been undermined by want of nourishment or by excesses,
who have gone through many courses of mercury, whose
rritable mucous membranes will not bear any more iodide of
potassium , and who are so sallow , so worn, so broken down, )
so eaten up by disease as to seem fit only for the grave."
The large quantities required, and the fact that the compound
decoction (which seems always the preparation employed)
cont:: ins also mezereum, guaiacum, and sassafras, show that,
wbat ever use we may make of such practice, we are not
thereby turning to account any specific properties of the
drug.
The proving shows considerable irritation of the urinary
organs, and Dr. Hering gives many testimonies to the power
of Sarsaparilla to relieve the sufferings attendant on gravel.
It seems also to have some relation to asthma — the associa
tion of this trouble with gravel, and their mutual dependence
un gout, must be remembered. In another direction, we find it
acting well in gonorrhoeal rheumatism . Dr. Guernsey gives
as its “ key -note" _ " much pain at the conclusion of passing
water, especially in women . ” Schreter found a gravedo of
six months' standing lessen, so that his head became free,
from the first day of his proving.
* Practitioner, iv, 257.
 SCILLA MARITIMA . 685

Teste makes aa curious statement about this drug, which I

give you for what it is worth . “ When a child with red hair
takes Sarsaparilla for three months ( three teaspoonsful a day
of a solution in four ounces of distilled water of three drops
of tincture at the eighteenth ), his hair absolutely changes
colour. From red it becomes a light flaxen . It is to be
remarked that Sarsaparilla in such a case causes no appreci
able organic trouble : the health of the child is in no way
:

affected .”
The higher potencies only have been used.
We will now speak of squills, under the name of
Scilla maritima.
A tincture is prepared for our use from the recent bulb.
There is a pathogenesis of Scilla in the third volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 86 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 172 from seven associates, and 30 from authors.
The acrid properties of squill, which are manifest enough on
the skin or in the stomach fromitslocal application, remain in it
when absorbed, and manifest themselves more or less every
where: it sets up irritation in the nervous system , in the
respiratory and urinary organs, and on the cutaneous surface.
It is in the second and third of these regions that its influence
is most felt ; so that it is ranked in old-school therapeutics
as expectorant and diuretic, in either action being qualified as
“ stimulating." Studied physiologically, we find that in its
mildest operation it excites (as Hahnemann says) the muci.
parous glands of the trachea and bronchi, and the urinary
secretion so far as its aqueous portion is concerned . When
it acts more powerfully, inflammatory symptoms are mani
fested in both regions, going on to bronchitis and pleuro
pneumonia in one, and to nephritis, etrangury, and suppressed
-or scanty , bloody, and albuminous — urine in the other.
Squill being thus expectorant and diuretic in ordinary
practice, it has been used by homeopathists mainly for
686 SECALE CORNUTUM .

coughs with excessive secretion, and for diabetes insipidus.

In both these conditions I can commend it highly. But
there is no reason why it should not be used, on the principle
of similarity, in those higher degrees of irritation which it
causes. The presence of inflammatory action is always held
to contra - indicate it in ordinary practice ; and, as I have often
said , their contra corresponds to our pro. Hahnemann justly
characterises its merely palliative action in chronic dropsies
with scanty urine. But in an earlier treatise * he had pointed
out that it was quite homeopathic to rapid acute dropsical
swellings with suppression of urine. He also says that in and
before his time it was much used in pneumonia and pleurisy,
and that its good effects are only explicable upon the same
principle. It has received some employment in his school as
a remedy for the latter malady ; and Professors Wood and
Chapman from the other camp recommend it very strongly in
cases of serous effusion into the pleura dependent upon
chronic inflammation of the membrane.
The narcotic, emetic, and cutaneous action of Scilla , and
the power of retarding the heart's action which it shares with
Digitalis, must be taken into account in our selection of the
drug ; but have not themselves been utilised in our practice.
I know of no other medicine which has the same charac
teristic range of action as that of Scilla .
I have myself used the first dilution for coughs, the
second and third for diuresis.
Our next medicine is the ergot of rye, which we incorrectly)
call
Secale cornutum .
Incorrectly, I say ; for it is not the rye which we use in
medicine, but the fungus which has developed at its expense.
Of this " ergot," freshly gathered, we prepare a tincture.
We also use Ergotin , which is not an alkaloid, but a " con
See Lesser Writings, p. 348.
 SECALE CORNUTUM , 687

centrated preparation ” analogous to Macrotin and Leptan

drin . It is usually triturated.
There is no detailed proving extant ; but a collection (by Dr.
66
Buchner) of the facts observed relative to “ ergotism ” is con
tained in the appendix to the fourth volume of the British
Journal of Homoeopathy; and аa full account of later experimenta
tion, physiological and clinical, is given by Dr. Horatio Wood .
It has long been known that when rye in which ergot has
been developed is taken for some time as food, a train of
poisonous symptoms is developed. These appear in two forms .
-the “ gangrenous" and the “ convulsive. ” In the former the
first symptoms are “ deep, heavy, aching pains in the limbs,
an intense feeling of cold with real coldness of the surface,
deep apathy, and a sense of utter weariness. Then a dark
red spot appears on the nose or on one of the extremities ;
all sensation is lost in the affected part ; the skin , perhaps
over a large surface, assumes a livid red hue, and in the foci
of local changes bullæ filled with serum appear. . . . . The
gangrene is generally dry, the parts withering and mummi
fying ; but sometimes it is moist. .... The toes are most
generally the portions destroyed, but it may be any one or
all of the extremities ; and the nose, lips, ears, and even
the buttocks sometimes bear the brunt of the disorder."
The rationale of these remarkable effects was very obscure
until it was discovered that Ergot exerts a specific influence
upon unstriped muscular fibre throughout the body, exciting
a persistent and long -lasting contraction . Hence its well
known effect upon the uterus, of which I shall speak pre
sently. But, finding as it does this kind of muscular fibre in
great abundance in the coats of the arteries, it has the same
influence upon them , diminishing their calibre and so reducing
their current of blood. It is in this way it seems to cause
gangrene : the mortification induced by it is like that which
appears in senile gangrene, or which results from embolism
or from frost - bite . The general coldness which is noted
points in this direction ; and also the fact that when suckling
686 SECALE CORNUTUM .

coughs with excessive secretion, and for diabetes insipidus.

In both these conditions I can commend it highly. But
there is no reason why it should not be used, on the principle
of similarity, in those higher degrees of irritation which it
causes. The presence of inflammatory action is always held
to contra -indicate it in ordinary practice; and, as I have often
said, their contra corresponds to our pro. Hahnemann justly
characterises its merely palliative action in chronic dropsies
with scanty urine. But in an earlier treatise * he had pointed
out that it was quite homeopathic to rapid acute dropsical
swellings with suppression of urine. He also says that in and
before his time it was much used in pneumonia and pleurisy,
and that its good effects are only explicable upon the same
principle. It has received some employment in his school as
a remedy for the latter malady ; and Professors Wood and
Chapman from the other camp recommend it very strongly in
cases of serous effusion into the pleura dependent upon
chronic inflammation of the membrane.
The narcotic, emetic , and cutaneous action of Scilla, and
the power of retarding the heart's action which it shares with
Digitalis, must be taken into account in our selection of the
drug ; but have not themselves been utilised in our practice.
I know of no other medicine which has the same charac
teristic range of action as that of Scilla.
I have myself used the first dilution for coughs, the
second and third for diuresis.
Our next medicine is the ergot of rye, which we ( incorrectly)
call
Secale cornutum .
Incorrectly, I say ; for it is not the rye which we use in
medicine, but the fungus which has developed at its expense.
Of this “ ergot,” freshly gathered, we prepare a tincture.
We also use Ergotin, which is not an alkaloid, but a “ con
See Lesser Writings, p. 348.
 SECALE CORNUTUM . 687

centrated preparation ” analogous to Macrotin and Leptan

drin . It is usually triturated.
There is no detailed proving extant ; but a collection (by Dr.
Buchner) of the facts observed relative to " ergotism " is con
tained in the appendix to the fourth volume of the British
Journal of Homeopathy; and a full account of later experimenta
tion, physiological and clinical, is given by Dr. Horatio Wood.
It has long been known that when rye in which ergot has
been developed is taken for some time as food , a train of
poisonous symptoms is developed. These appear in two forms.
-the “ gangrenous ” and the “ convulsive." In the former the
first symptoms are “deep, heavy, aching pains in the limbs,
an intense feeling of cold with real coldness of the surface,
deep apathy, and a sense of utter weariness. Then a dark
red spot appears on the nose or on one of the extremities ;
all sensation is lost in the affected part ; the skin, perhaps
over a large surface, assumes a livid red hue, and in the foci
of local changes bullæ filled with serum appear. .... The
gangrene is generally dry, the parts withering and mummi
fying ; but sometimes it is moist. . . . . The toes are most
generally the portions destroyed , but it may be any one or
all of the extremities ; and the nose, lips, ears , and even
the buttocks sometimes bear the brunt of the disorder."
The rationale of these remarkable effects was very obscure
until it was discovered that Ergot exerts a specific influence
upon unstriped muscular fibre throughout the body, exciting
a persistent and long -lasting contraction . Hence its well
known effect upon the uterus, of which I shall speak pre
sently. But, finding as it does this kind of muscular fibre in
great abundance in the coats of the arteries, it has the same
influence upon them , diminishing their calibre and so reducing
their current of blood. It is in this way it seems to cause
gangrene : the mortification induced by it is like that which
appears in senile gangrene, or which results from embolism
or from frost -bite. The general coldness which is noted
points in this direction ; and also the fact that when suckling
698 SECALE CORNUTUM .

women are ergotized the milk is dried up, and young women
get amenorrhoea.
It seems to be an open question whether this action of
Ergot on unstriped muscular fibre is exercised directly, or
through the ganglionic nerves ; but I myself incline strongly
to the former hypothesis. The drug would be thus the pre
cise opposite of Amyl nitrite. The arterial spasm caused is
more persistent than that which results from cold, and there
is less tendency to reactive dilatation . In acute poisoning,
however, the latter may be seen, as in a case cited by Dr.
Wood, where the face became intensely congested and purplish
red, and pain in the head was felt.
The other form of ergotism is the convulsive or spasmodic.
The symptoms here are those of the nervous system . Formi.
cation and numbness, going on to complete anæsthesia , com
mence the morbid history. Then follow violent and painful
tonic contractions all over the body, but especially in the
flexors of the extremities. More or less paralysis mingles with
the spasms,and the same condition is manifest in the cerebral
and optic centres, where disturbance of vision often goes as
far as amaurosis, and giddiness, epileptic paroxysms, delirium
and idiocy reveal the low estate of the brain.
These phenomena, I say , belong to the nervous centres.
The voluntary muscles and the nerve-trunks are found after
death in their wonted integrity. But it is another question
whether they arise from any direct action of the poison upon
the nervous substance. It seems to me more probable that they
are the result of the profound anæmia induced in the brain
and cord by the arterial contraction caused by the drug.
Gaspard's experiments on frogs, indeed, cited by Buchner,
showed much congestion and softening of both centres ; but
this condition is so unlike that induced in warm -blooded
animals, and which Dr. Brown- Sequard has experimentally
demonstrated in the spinal cord under the influence of Ergot,
that I cannot lay any stress upon them .
These gangrenous and spasmodic phenomena constitute the
 SECALE CORNUTUM . 689

chief effects of Ergot on the healthy body. They are some

what intermingled in chronic poisoning by it, and still more
in acute. In the former, moreover, they are both accompanied
by gastro -intestinal symptoms, of which the most characteristic
is a ravenous hunger, which may persist even till death . The
frequency of abortion in pregnant women suffering from
ergotism directed attention to the action of the drug upon
the uterus. It was found to be powerfully stimulant to its
muscular fibres, having therefore little effect upon it in the
unimpregnated state or in early pregnancy, where these are
but little developed ; but acting as an abortifacient in the
later months, and as an ecbolic during parturition. There is
some reason , moreover, to believe that it is capable of causing
an inflammatory state of the organ , when given for such con
ditions as leucorrhoea : it certainly does so in experiments on
animals .
This power of Ergot to contract unstriped muscular fibre as
it is found in the arteries and in the uterus has led to its
extensive therapeutic use in ordinary practice. It is employed
to arrest hæmorrhage, to occlude aneurisms, to starve fibrous
tumours, and to diminish congestion of the brain and cord .
You know, also, its value to the accoucheur, who with it aids
the expulsion of the fætus or the placenta, and prevents post
partum hæmorrhage by inducing immediate contraction of the
uterine walls and vessels. There is nothing to prevent your
use of it for these purposes, under the usual rules and with
the obvious precautions. It is a potent agent you are handling ;
and you must take care not to asphyxiate the child you would
deliver by making the pains too continuous, or (as an American
colleague of ours has lately done *) irremediably destroy the
whole nutrition of your patient while you are aiming at her
morbid growth. You will also do well, here as elsewhere, to
consider whether you cannot cure by the more excellent way
of homeopathy ere you avail yourself of a purely antipathic
agent.
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxiv, 391.
688 SECALE CORNUTUM .

women are ergotized the milk is dried up, and young women
get amenorrhæa.
It seems to be an open question whether this action of
Ergot on unstriped muscular fibre is exercised directly, or
through the ganglionic nerves ; but I myself incline strongly
to the former hypothesis. The drug would be thus the pre
cise opposite of Amyl nitrite. The arterial spasm caused is
more persistent than that which results from cold, and there
is less tendency to reactive dilatation . In acute poisoning,
however, the latter may be seen , as in a case cited by Dr.
Wood, where the face became intensely congested and purplish
red, and pain in the head was felt .
The other form of ergotism is the convulsive or spasmodic.
The symptoms here are those of the nervous system . Formi.
cation and numbness, going on to complete anæsthesia , com
mence the morbid history. Then follow violent and painful
tonic contractions all over the body, but especially in the
flexors of the extremities. More or less paralysis mingles with
the spasms, and the same condition is manifest in the cerebral
and optic centres, where disturbance of vision often goes as
far as amaurosis, and giddiness, epileptic paroxysms, delirium
and idiocy reveal the low estate of the brain .
These phenomena, I say, belong to the nervous centres.
The voluntary muscles and the nerve-trunks are found after
death in their wonted integrity. But it is another question
whether they arise from any direct action of the poison upon
the nervous substance . It seems to me more probable that they
are the result of the profound anæmia induced in the brain
and cord by the arterial contraction caused by the drug.
Gaspard's experiments on frogs, indeed , cited by Buchner,
showed much congestion and softening of both centres ; but
this condition is so unlike that induced in warm -blooded
animals, and which Dr. Brown - Sequard has experimentally
demonstrated in the spinal cord under the influence of Ergot,
that I cannot lay any stress up
These gangrenous and spas pomena con
 SECALE CORNUTUM . 689

chief effects of Ergot on the healthy body. They are some

what intermingled in chronic poisoning by it, and still more
in acute. In the former, moreover, they are both accompanied
by gastro -intestinal symptoms, of which the most characteristic
is a ravenous hunger, which may persist even till death . The
frequency of abortion in pregnant women suffering from
ergotism directed attention to the action of the drug upon
the uterus. It was found to be powerfully stimulant to its
muscular fibres, having therefore little effect upon it in the
unimpregnated state or in early pregnancy, where these are
but little developed ; but acting as an abortifacient in the
later months, and as an ecbolic during parturition. There is
some reason , moreover, to believe that it is capable of causing
an inflammatory state of the organ, when given for such con
ditions as leucorrhæa : it certainly does so in experiments on
animals .
This power of Ergot to contract unstriped muscular fibre as
it is found in the arteries and in the uterus has led to its
extensive therapeutic use in ordinary practice. It is employed
to arrest hæmorrhage, to occlude aneurisms, to starve fibrous
tumours, and to diminish congestion of the brain and cord .
You know , also , its value to the accoucheur, who with it aids
the expulsion of the fætus or the placenta, and prevents post
partum hæmorrhage by inducing immediate contraction of the
uterine walls and vessels. There is nothing to prevent your
use of it for these purposes, under the usual rules and with
the obvious precautions. It is a potent agent you are handling ;
and you must take care not to asphyxiate the child you would
deliver by making the pains too continuous, or (as an American
colleague of ours has lately done *) irremediably destroy the
whole nutrition of your patient while you are aiming at her
morbid growth . You will also do well, here as elsewhere, to
consider whether you cannot cure by the more excellent way
of homoeopathy ere you avail yourself of a purely antipathic
agent.
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiv, 391.
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
>

and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and ( in preg.

nant women) abortion . This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way.* But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens the
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingly
exceptional On the other hand, it is a most valuable
homeopathically acting remedy for ovario -uterine excitement;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red , in metror.
rhagia, in threatened miscarriage from irritation , and in
metritis-in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect aa most satisfactory cure. The presence of con
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more.
over : for it is in “ hæmorrhagic metritis," “ metritis accom
>

panied by flooding,” that he gives it. One grain of the

powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of symı.
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
what are vaguely called “ arthritic affections.” The connec
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
* See case in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 301 .
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. üi, p. 416). Recent therapeutists attempt to make out that it is
in atonic menorrhagia that Sabina is curative ; but M. Beau is against
them .
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

malady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

curative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna, Crocus
Pulsatilla , Ruta, and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th, and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra.
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture .
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura, containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others. The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted.
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena.* Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
cften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes ::

_ " in the suffocating cough of children , waking them up in

the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing , and great dyspnea, but without croup , I have
found small doses of Sambucus p中 of the most rapid service."
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures .
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and (in preg.
nant women) abortion . This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way.* But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens the
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingls
exceptional. On the other hand , it is a most valuable
homeopathically acting remedy for ovario - uterine excitement;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red, in metror.
rhagia , in threatened miscarriage from irritation , and in
metritis - in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect a most satisfactory cure. The presence of con .
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more
over : for it is in “ hæmorrhagic metritis," “ metritis accom
panied by flooding , " that he gives it. One grain of the
powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of symi.
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
what are vaguely called “ arthritic affections.” The connec
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
See case in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 301.
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., txi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. iii, p. 416). Recent therapeatists attempt to make out that it is
in atonie menorrhagia that Sabina is curative ; but M. Bean is against
them.
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

nalady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

curative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna, Crocus
Pulsatilla , Ruta , and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th , and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra .
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture.
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura, containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others. The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted.
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena.* Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
eften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes :
_ " in the suffocating cough of children , waking them up in
the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing, and great dyspnoea, but without croup , I have
found small doses of Sambucus y of the most rapid service.”
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures.
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and (in preg.
nant women) abortion. This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way. * But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingly
exceptional. On the other hand, it is a most valuable
homeopathically acting remedy for ovario -uterine excitement;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red , in metror.
rhagia, in threatened miscarriage from irritation , and in
metritis — in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect a most satisfactory cure. The presence of con
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more
over : for it is in “ hæmorrhagic metritis," “ metritis accom
panied by flooding,” that he gives it. One grain of the
powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of sym
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
what are vaguely called “ arthritic affections." The connec
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
* See case in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 301.
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. iii, p. 416). Recent therapeutists attempt to make out that it is
in atonic menorrhagia that Sabina is curative; but M. Beau is against
them.
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

malady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

curative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna , Crocus
Pulsatilla , Ruta , and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th, and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra.
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture.
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura, containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others. The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted.
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena.* Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
eften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes : :

--" in the suffocating cough of children, waking them up in

the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing, and great dyspnea, but without croup, I have
found small doses of Sambucus p of the most rapid service.”
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures.
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and (in preg.
nant women) abortion. This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way. * But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens the
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingly
exceptional. On the other hand, it is a most valuable
homeopathically acting remedy for ovario - uterine excitement;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red, in metror.
rhagia, in threatened miscarriage from irritation, and in
metritis - in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect a most satisfactory cure. The presence of con
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more
over : for it is in “ hæmorrhagic metritis," “ metritis accom
panied by flooding," that he gives it. One grain of the
powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of sym
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
6
what are vaguely called “ arthritic affections .” The connec .
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
* See case in Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxiv, 301.
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. üi, p. 416 ). Recent therapeutists attempt to make out that it is
in atonic menorrhagia that Sabina is curative ; but M. Beau is against
them.
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

malady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

carative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna , Crocus
Pulsatilla, Ruta , and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th, and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra.
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture .
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura, containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others . The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted.
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena.* Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
eften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes :
- “ in the suffocating cough of children, waking them up in
the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing, and great dyspncea , but without croup , I have
found small doses of Sambucus p of the most rapid service .”
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures.
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
680 SABINA .

albuminous. It also manifests a specific influence over the

pelvic organs, causing strangury in front, bloody stools behind,
and between the two metritis with hæmorrhage, and (in preg .
nant women) abortion . This uterine action of the drug has
given it its chief therapeutic application. It is of course used
in the old school as an emmenagogue, and enjoys some little
repute in that capacity. Dr. Madden has shown that it may
occasionally be used without harm in this way . * But it must
be remembered that it acts here as a purgative opens the
bowels ; and its use in our hands must be correspondingls
exceptional. On the other hand, it is a most valuable
homeopathically acting remedy for ovario - uterine excitement ;
as in menorrhagia where the blood is bright red, in metror
rhagia , in threatened miscarriage from irritation, and in
metritis — in a case of which disease in an acute form I have
seen it effect aa most satisfactory cure. The presence of con
sentaneous rectal and vesical irritation adds weight to the
indications for the choice of Sabina in these disorders.
M. Beau, whom I have already quoted as a witness to the
value of Ruta in uterine hæmorrhage, extols savin as its
chief remedy. He will have it exactly homeopathic, more
over : for it is in ““ hæmorrhagic metritis," " metritis accom .
panied by flooding ," that he gives it. One grain of the
powder is given for a dose, and very often needs no repe.
tition.t
Sabina caused in the provers an unusual number of sym .
ptoms relating to the joints, even so far as to set up heat,
redness, and swelling. It has been used in both schools for
what are vaguely called “arthritic affections." The connec.
tion which has recently been traced between rheumatic gout
and the uterine functions makes it probable that this is the
* See case in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 301.
+ See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxi, 342. Aran had recommended it before
him ( vol. üi, p. 416). Recenttherapeutists attempt to make out that it is
in atonic menorrhagia that Sabina is curative ; but M. Bean is against
them.
 SAMBUCUS NIGRA . 681

malady in which, especially when recent, Sabina would be

curative. I have used it once or twice upon these indications
with very satisfactory results. It has occasionally relieved the
paroxysm of true gout.
As allied medicines to Sabina I may name Belladonna, Crocus
Pulsatilla, Ruta , and Trillium .
All dilutions, from the 1st to the 24th, and even the crude
oil or powder, have in various hands proved efficacious. I
myself am very well satisfied with the 2nd and 3rd decimal.
The next name on my list is the common elder,
Sambucus nigra.
The fresh inner bark of the young branches is used for the
tincture.
There is a pathogenesis of Sambucus in the fifth volume of
the Materia Medica Pura, containing 20 symptoms from
Hahnemann, and 99 from five others. The articles in Hempel
and Teste also should be consulted.
The only facts about the physiological action of Sambucus
to which I can assign importance are that it is a powerful
sudorific ; and that it has caused asthmatic phenomena.* Its
therapeutic use accordingly has been to moderate excessive
sweating, and to relieve asthma, laryngismus stridulus, and
the obstructive coryza of infants. I have myself found it of
great use in checking those debilitating perspirations which
eften retard convalescence after delivery. I think, too, that
I have seen some benefit from it in asthma. Dr. Bayes writes :
— “ in the suffocating cough of children, waking them up in
the middle of the night, and accompanied by rough sibilant
wheezing, and great dyspnea, but without croup,, I have
found small doses of Sambucus p of the most rapid service. "
It has some repute among us in laryngismus stridulus.
Teste describes some neuralgic pains in the forearms which
it cures .
Aconite and Ipecacuanha are allied remedies.
* See Hahnemann's sixth symptom .
682 SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS .

The 1st decimal is the dilution I have used in diaphoresis

and asthma, and Hahnemann himself recommends the pure
juice to be given.
America again comes forward to furnish us with our nest
medicine, the blood-root,
Sanguinaria Canadensis.
The tincture is prepared from the rhizoma.
There is a pathogenesis in the Materia Medica of American
Provings. Dr. Hale's article in his New Remedies should also
be consulted.
The physiological effects of Sanguinaria are not very
distinctly known. It seems to be a general irritant. It
comes to us from the botanic practitioners of America with
a high reputation in the treatment of affections of the respira
tory organs. It is said to have proved curative in homæo
pathic practice in membranous croup andcedematous laryngitis,
in chronic cough with hectic, and even in incipient phthisis.
Dr. Hale recommends it in the third stage of pneumonia
(grey hepatization ) ; and Dr. Drysdale also in pulmonary
abscess . * Then again Dr. C. Hering states that Sanguinaria
is the best medicine we have for recurring sick - headache.
Lastly, Dr. Gray of New York recommends it for the flushings
which are so annoying at the climacteric age.
I have myself tried Sanguinaria in all these conditions,
where the symptoms indicated it. My experience with it has
been on the whole satisfactory ; but I cannot yet assign its
exact place in relation to other medicines.
Dr. Hale compares Sanguinaria with Phosphorus and Lyco
podium : to me Scilla seems its closest analogue.
Both high and very low dilutions seem to have been used
with advantage.
I would now say a few words upon the pitcher- plant,
* Monthly Hom . Review , 4, 349.
 SARSAPARILLA . 683

Sarracenia purpurea .
A tincture of the root, or triturations of the whole dry
plant, seem the best preparations.
Provings of Sarracenia, instituted by three persons, with
substantial doses, are contained in the second edition of
Dr. Hale's New Remedies, and in the therapeutic portion of
the fourth edition you may read its clinical history.
Sarracenia came into medical practice some fifteen years
ago with a high repute among the American Indians as a
remedy for smallpox. Several English and American
practitioners reported most favourably of its virtues : it
seemed to promote eruption at first, but to check maturation
afterwards, so that unvaccinated subjects recovered as if they
had only had varioloid. Mr. Marston's trial of it at the Small
pox Hospital, however, proved unsuccessful; and it has
fallen out of use in the old school. Its homæopathic
provings showed a power of developing feverishness, with
pains in the bones and soreness of the limbs, not unlike
that with which variola sets in ; and Dr. Miracas in Spain , Dr.
Cigliano in Italy, and Dr. Mouremans in Belgium have
published reports of its use which seem to show it possessed
of no little efficacy. We need further experimentation to
fix its place in the treatment of this disease.
The dilutions from the 1st decimal to the 3rd centesimal
have been those in which Sarracenia has been used.
Next, of
Sarsaparilla ,
of which also triturations, or a tincture of the root, are
prepared in homeopathic pharmacy.
There is a pathogenesis of Sarsaparilla in the fourth
volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 34 symptoms
from Hahnemann, and 111 from four others. Nenning then
proved it for Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre, the
second volume of which contains 347 symptoms from him .
 684 SARSAPARILLA .

In the Chronic Diseases all these are incorporated, together

with some new symptoms from Schreter, making 561 in all.
An arrangement of these materials, with clinical observa
tions interspersed, appears in Dr. Hering's Materia Medica .
It has long been said in the old school that physicians despise
while surgeons swear by this medicine. Dr. Clifford Allbutt
has lately proved an exception to his class in this respect;
for he has come forward to show the benefits of the practice
followed in the Leeds Infirmary of giving Sarsaparilla in
iarge doses — from twelve ounces to a pint of the compound
decoction daily.* In this way he is able to benefit old
syphilitic patients whose condition would otherwise seem
hopeless— “ patients," he says, “whose constitutions have
been undermined by want of nourishment or by excesses,
who have gone through many courses of mercury, whose
rritable mucous membranes will not bear any more iodide of
potassium , and who are so sallow, so worn, so broken down,
so eaten up by disease as to seem fit only for the grave."
The large quantities required, and the fact that the compound
decoction (which seems always the preparation employed)
cont::ins also mezereum , guaiacum , and sassafras, show that,
whatever use we may make of such practice, we are not
thereby turning to account any specific properties of the
drug .
The proving shows considerable irritation of the urinary
organs, and Dr. Hering gives many testimonies to the power
of Sarsaparilla to relieve the sufferings attendant on gravel.
It seems also to have some relation to asthma — the associa
tion of this trouble with gravel, and their mutual dependence
on gout, must be remembered . In another direction , we find it
acting well in gonorrheal rheumatism . Dr. Guernsey gives
as its " key -note " - " much pain at the conclusion of passing
water, especially in women ." Schreter found a gravedo of
six months' standing lessen, so that his head became free,
from the first day of his proving.
* Practitioner , iv, 257.
 SCILLA MARITIMA . 685

Teste makes a curious statement about this drug, which I

give you for what it is worth. “ When a child with red hair
takes Sarsaparilla for three months (three teaspoonsful a day
of a solution in four ounces of distilled water of three drops
of tincture at the eighteenth) , his hair absolutely changes
colour. From red it becomes a light flaxen. It is to be
remarked that Sarsaparilla in such a case causes no appreci.
able organic trouble :: the health of the child is in no way
affected .”
The higher potencies only have been used .
We will now speak of squills, under the name of
Scilla maritima.
A tincture is prepared for our use from the recent bulb.
There is a pathogenesis of Scilla in the third volume of
the Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing 86 symptoms from
Hahnemann, 172 from seven associates, and 30 from authors.
The acrid properties of squill, which are manifest enough on
the skin or in the stomach from its local application, remain in it
when absorbed , and manifest themselves more or less every
where : it sets up irritation in the nervous system , in the
respiratory and urinary organs, and on the cutaneous surface.
It is in the second and third of these regions that its influence
is most felt ; so that it is ranked in old-school therapeutics
as expectorant and diuretic, in either action being qualified as
" stimulating.” Studied physiologically, we find that in its
mildest operation it excites (as Hahnemann says) the muci.
parous glands of the trachea and bronchi, and the urinary
secretion so far as its aqueous portion is concerned. When
it acts more powerfully, inflammatory symptoms are mani.
fested in both regions, going on to bronchitis and pleuro
pneumonia in one, and to nephritis, strangury, and suppressed
--or scanty, bloody, and albuminous - urine in the other.
Squill. being thus expectorant and diuretic in ordinary
practice, it has been used by homeopathists mainly for
086 SECALE CORNUTUM .

coughs with excessive secretion, and for diabetes insipidus.

In both these conditions I can commend it highly. But
there is no reason why it should not be used, on the principle
of similarity, in those higher degrees of irritation which it
causes. The presence of inflammatory action is always held
to contra -indicate it in ordinary practice; and, as I have often
said, their contra corresponds to our pro. Hahnemann justly
characterises its merely palliative action in chronic dropsies
with scanty urine. But in an earlier treatise * he had pointed
out that it was quite homeopathic to rapid acute dropsical
swellings with suppression of urine. He also says that in and
before his time it was much used in pneumonia and pleurisy,
and that its good effects are only explicable upon the same
principle. It has received some employment in his school as
a remedy for the latter malady ; and Professors Wood and
Chapman from the other camp recommend it very strongly in
cases of serous effusion into the pleura dependent upon
chronic inflammation of the membrane.
The narcotic, emetic, and cutaneous action of Scilla, and
the power of retarding the heart's action which it shares with
Digitalis, must be taken into account in our selection of the
drug ; but have not themselves been utilised in our practice.
I know of no other medicine which has the same charac
teristic range of action as that of Scilla.
I have myself used the first dilution for coughs, the
second and third for diuresis .

Our next medicine is the ergot of rye, which we ( incorrectly )

call
Secale cornutum .
Incorrectly, I say ; for it is not the rye which we use in
medicine, but the fungus which has developed at its expense.
Of this " ergot," freshly gathered, we prepare a tincture.
We also use Ergotin , which is not an alkaloid , but aa "con.
* See Lesser Writings, p. 348 .
 SECALE CORNUTUM , 687

centrated preparation ” analogous to Macrotin and Leptan

drin . It is usually triturated .
There is no detailed proving extant ; but a collection (by Dr.
Buchner) of the facts observed relative to “ ergotism ” is con
tained in the appendix to the fourth volume of the British
Journal of Homoeopathy; and aa full account of later experimenta
tion, physiological and clinical, is given by Dr. Horatio Wood .
It has long been known that when rye in which ergot has
been developed is taken for some time as food, a train of
poisonous symptoms is developed . These appear in two forms .
-the “ gangrenous” and the “ convulsive.” In the former the
first symptoms are “ deep, heavy, aching pains in the limbs,
an intense feeling of cold with real coldness of the surface ,
deep apathy, and a sense of utter weariness. Then a dark
red spot appears on the nose or on one of the extremities ;
all sensation is lost in the affected part ; the skin, perhaps
over a large surface, assumes a livid red hue, and in the foci
of local changes bullæ filled with serum appear. .... The
gangrene is generally dry, the parts withering and mummi.
fying ; but sometimes it is moist. ...
... The toes are most
generally the portions destroyed, but it may be any one or
all of the extremities ; and the nose, lips, ears, and even
the buttocks sometimes bear the brunt of the disorder."
The rationale of these remarkable effects was very obscure
until it was discovered that Ergot exerts a specific influence
upon unstriped muscular fibre throughout the body, exciting
a persistent and long -lasting contraction . Hence its well.
known effect upon the uterus, of which I shall speak pre
sently . But, finding as it does this kind of muscular fibre in
great abundance in the coats of the arteries, it has the same
influence upon them , diminishing their calibre and so reducing
>

their current of blood . It is in this way it seems to cause

gangrene : the mortification induced by it is like that which
.

appears in senile gangrene, or which results from embolism

or from frost-bite . The general coldness which is noted
points in this direction ; and also the fact that when suckling
688 SECALE CORNUTUM .

women are ergotized the milk is dried up , and young women

get amenorrhea.
It seems to be an open question whether this action of
Ergot on unstriped muscular fibre is exercised directly, or
through the ganglionic nerves ; but I myself incline strongly
to the former hypothesis. The drug would be thus the pre
cise opposite of Amyl nitrite. The arterial spasm caused is
more persistent than that which results from cold, and there
is less tendency to reactive dilatation. In acute poisoning,
however, the latter may be seen, as in a case cited by Dr.
Wood, where the face became intensely congested and purplish
red, and pain in the head was felt.
The other form of ergotism is the convulsive or spasmodic.
The symptoms here are those of the nervous system . Formi.
cation and numbness, going on to complete anesthesia, com
mence the morbid history. Then follow violent and painful
tonic contractions all over the body, but especially in the
flexors of the extremities. More or less paralysis mingles with
the spasms, and the same condition is manifest in the cerebral
and optic centres, where disturbance of vision often goes as
far as amaurosis, and giddiness, epileptic paroxysms, delirium
and idiocy reveal the low estate of the brain .
These phenomena, I say, belong to the nervous centres.
The voluntary muscles and the nerve -trunks are found after
death in their wonted integrity. But it is another question
whether they arise from any direct action of the poison upon
the nervous substance. It seems to me more probable that they
are the result of the profound anæmia induced in the brain
and cord by the arterial contraction caused by the drug.
Gaspard's experiments on frogs, indeed, cited by Buchner,
showed much congestion and softening of both centres ; but
this condition is so unlike that induced in warm -blooded
animals, and which Dr. Brown-Sequard has experimentally
demonstrated in the spinal cord under the influence of Ergot,
that I cannot lay any stress upon them.
These gangrenous and spasmodic phenomena constitute the
 SECALE CORNUTUM . 689

chief effects of Ergot on the healthy body. They are some

what intermingled in chronic poisoning by it, and still more
in acute. In the former, moreover, they are both accompanied
by gastro -intestinal symptoms, of which the most characteristic
is a ravenous hunger, which may persist even till death . The
frequency of abortion in pregnant women suffering from
ergotism directed attention to the action of the drug upon
the uterus. It was found to be powerfully stimulant to its
muscular fibres, having therefore little effect upon it in the
unimpregnated state or in early pregnancy , where these are
but little developed ; but acting as an abortifacient in the
later months, and as an ecbolic during parturition. There is
some reason , moreover , to believe that it is capable of causing
an inflammatory state of the organ , when given for such con
ditions as leucorrhæa : it certainly does so in experiments on
animals .
This power of Ergot to contract unstriped muscular fibre as
it is found in the arteries and in the uterus has led to its
extensive therapeutic use in ordinary practice. It is employed
to arrest hæmorrhage, to occlude aneurisms, to starve fibrous
tumours, and to diminish congestion of the brain and cord .
You know , also, its value to the accoucheur, who with it aids
the expulsion of the fætus or the placenta, and prevents post
partum hæmorrhage by inducing immediate contraction of the
uterine walls and vessels. There is nothing to prevent your
use of it for these purposes, under the usual rules and with
the obvious precautions. It is a potent agent you are handling ;
and you must take care not to asphyxiate the child you would
deliver by making the pains too continuous, or (as an American
colleague of ours has lately done *) irremediably destroy the
whole nutrition of your patient while you are aiming at her
morbid growth . You will also do well, here as elsewhere, to
consider whether you cannot cure by the more excellent way
of homeopathy ere you avail yourself of a purely antipathic
agent.
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiv, 391.
690 SECALE CORNUTUM .

Not much, however, has been done with Secale as a homeo

pathically -acting remedy. Persistent arterial contraction is
not a common idiopathic morbid state. It is certainly present
in Asiatic cholera, and here Secale has some reputation , - Dr.
Russell expressing great faith in it in some of the worst
varieties of the disease, especially when occurring in women .
It is not unlikely, moreover, that the anæmic condition which
is now regarded as the basis of " spinal irritation " is thus
caused . The cramps and dysæsthesiæ which accompany this
affection are very like those of Secale, and are often amenable
to its use.* Senile gangrene, frost -bite, and other forms of
sphacelus are phenomenally at least like the effects of Ergot ;
and it should be borne in mind in their treatment.
But the chief use of Secale in the school of Hahnemann
has been derived from its action on the uterus. To check the
tendency to miscarriage it is generally the best remedy in the
later months of pregnancy , when the muscular tissue of the
womb is largely developed. Frequent labour- like pains,
without discharge, indicate it here. It will also relieve after.
pains, when these are continuous and unintermitting. Its
tendency to inflame the uterus shows that it may be homæo
pathic to hyperamic and even hæmorrhagic conditions of the
organ. There is a general agreement among those who use
the medium and higher dilutions that it will, thus given ,
check many a menorrhagia when the other symptoms of the
patient suggest it. Bähr and Kafka, moreover, recommend
it in inflammations of the uterus when symptoms of putrescence
appear. It has also proved useful in prolapsus uteri ; † and
it is said to be used in the Leopoldstadt Hospital with much
benefit to relieve the pain of uterine cancer.
More difficult of belief are the statements of the practitioners
I have mentioned as to the efficacy of high potencies of the
drug to restore labour-pains, when these are flagging from
general or uterine exhaustion. Experienced accoucheurs like
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 218.
+ See ibid ., i, 407.
 SELENIUM 691

Leadam , Croserio, and Guernsey, however, seem to have no

doubt on the subject; and experience must always outweigh
theory. I can only leave you to test the question for your
selves. Dr. Guernsey thinks the remedy best suited to thin
>
scrawny ” women.
Secale has also some repute in paralysis of the bladder,
where there exists a continuous sensation as if the organ
were imperfectly relieved of its contents .
Caulophyllum probably acts on the uterus in a manner
similar to that of Secale . Its myotic influence is unique.
I have mentioned the affections in which the higher dilu
tions have been found useful. Otherwise, Secale has usually
been given in the lower potencies .
I have but little to say about my next medicine, which
another of the rare metals,
Selenium .
It is of course prepared by trituration.
There is a short pathogenesis of Selenium in the twelfth
volume of the Archiv, purporting to have been obtained by
Dr. Hering on himself, but without explanation as to the
manner of his experimenting.
Selenium appears from this pathogenesis to have some
influence upon the larynx and the male genital organs . A
similar concatenation appears in the pathogenesis of Spongia :
it is interesting, from the physiological connexion between
the two parts, as seen in the changes which occur at puberty.
Dr. Meyhoffer writes of it : - “few as are the laryngeal
symptoms of the proving of this mineral, the raising of small
lumps of blood and mucus, and the tendency to hoarseness,
are sufficiently characteristic to show its specific affinity for
the vocal organ . Moreover, Selenium , when combined with
alkalies, appears to possess a powerful energy , according to
the experiments of Rabuteau, and an almost exclusive affinity
for the breathing apparatus. Rabuteau operated on seven
692 SENEC10 AUREUS .

middle-sized dogs : he introduced from 10 to 50 centigrammes

of selenite or seleniate of potash or soda diluted in water or
milk, either directly by injection into a vein, or by causing it
to be absorbed from the stomach . The animals died ; but
whether death occurred within half an hour of the introduc
tion of the poison into the system, or some days later, they
all expired with the symptoms of asphyxia. The lungs were
found extensively and intensely congested, the air-tubes
injected, the trachea choked with froth, and the blood in the
arteries dark - coloured . ” He esteems the medicine highly in
the milder forms of follicular and the incipient stage of
tubercular laryngitis, preferring the seleniate of soda , from
the third to the sixth decimal, to any potencies of the pure
metal .
Selenium has also been found useful, in higher attenua
tions, in impotence.
I must now say a few words upon the

Senecio aureus,
of which we make a tincture from the entire plant.
There are provings of this plant by three persons, in sub
stantial doses of the mother - tincture, in the second edition of
Dr. Hale's New Remedies ; and the therapeutic part of his
fourth edition tells us all that is known of its curative
virtues.
These provings evidence a good deal of action upon the
kidneys, as shown by pain in the loins and bloody urine.
Senecio has occasionally proved curative in renal dropsy, and
in congestion and even inflammation of the kidneys ; also in
one case of chronic inflammation of the neck of the bladder.
It is popularly known as “ female regulator ” and “ false
valerian , " names which indicate its kind of action . It has
not been proved upon a woman , but appears likely to be bene
ficial in some forms of amenorrhea. It also seems to act upon
 SENEGA . 693

the respiratory organs somewhat like Sanguinaria. Its exact

place in practice has yet to be defined.
Helmias, Pulsatilla , and Sanguinaria seem its closest
analogues.
The clinical results mentioned above have been mainly
obtained from the mother -tincture .

My next medicine is the snake -root, Polygala

Senega.
We make a tincture from the dried root.
Stapf's Additions to the Materia Medica contain an ex
haustive monograph on Senega by Dr. Seidel, which includes
provings by eight persons, carried out with the powdered root
and the mother -tincture.
Senega is commonly known and used as a " stimulating
expectorant.” The drugs so -called are generally , if not always,
specific irritants of the respiratory mucous membrane. Such
is Senega. The proving reveals that it has a special affinity
for this tissue, causing a great deal of cough, mostly dry, and
pains of all kinds about the chest; while Schroff found senegin
to produce irritative cough and secretion of mucus, lasting
several hours. You will find prefixed to the pathogenesis
some good cases of chronic bronchitis, thus characterised, in
which Senega proved curative. I myself have often prescribed
it with the utmost benefit in the bronchitis of old people,
when the cough is irritating and shaking. One patient to
whom I gave it compared its effects to that of an opiate.
That in such cases it acts homeopathically we have the testi
mony of one of the old school, Dr. H. Dobell. * “ Senega ,"
he says,, “ irritates the cough. If it already is frequent, it does
harm . ” I have seen it cause this aggravation even in the
first dilution . Dr. Meyhoffer commends it when the phlegm
is very adhesive.
This is the main sphere of the action of Senega. But it
* On Winter -cough,
45
694 SEPIA .

undoubtedly has something to say also to the eyes. In the

provers, the lids were much inflamed , and there were aching
pains and sense of tension in the balls. From Dr. Seidel's
citations, it seems that Senega was in high repute of old
among the German oculists for various affections of the eyes,
on which they regarded it as exerting a specific action . Dr.
Emery has mentioned its value in hypopyon ; * and Dr. Seidel
gives some cases of iritis and specks upon the cornea treated
by it.
In one of his interesting Causeries clinicales Dr. Gallavardin
has illustrated the value of Senega in pleuritic effusion and
hydrothorax ; t and in the twenty -seventh volume of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy you will find some cases of
pneumonia and of vesical catarrh in which it proved efficacious.
To the last-named affection symptoms 274-278 of the proving
plainly point.
Bryonia and Hepar sulphuris are the medicines which most
resemble Senega in their influence upon the respiratory
organs.
I have always used the second dilution where the drug was
perfectly homeopathic; but higher potencies seem to have
acted well.

I will conclude my lecture to- day with one of those medi.

cines whose extensive use is so marked a differentia of
homeopathic practice,

Sepia ,
or, more fully, Sepiæ succus. It is the blackish -brown fluid
contained in the pouch of the mollusc so named, and which in
its dried state is so largely used by artists. In this condition
we triturate it with milk -sugar for medicinal use.
Hahnemann published a pathogenesis of Sepia in the first
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiii, 341.
+ See l’Art Médical, xxvii, 127, 290 ; and Brit.Journ . of Hom ., xxvi,
338 .
 SEPIA . 695

edition of the Chronic Diseases. It contains 1242 symptoms.

In the second edition 413 additional symptoms are given, of
which about 160 were from von Gersdorff and four others ;
the rest being his own . Sepia was the medicine selected for
proving by the American Institute of Homeopathy in
1874-5 ; and reports of most extensive experimentation with
it were presented at its annual gathering in 1875. We have
not yet received the Transactions of the assembly ; but from
the accounts contained in the journals we learn that the
provings were made under the direction of the professors in
the various medical colleges of the United States, and that
thirty-three persons took part in them, eleven of whom are
specified as being women.
The objections which have hindered me from drawing any
conclusions from the pathogeneses of the Chronic Diseases
exist in fullest force in the case of Sepia. When, therefore,
I refer you to the study of its symptoms by Dr. Veith Meyer,
which is translated from the Vierteljahrschrift in the
thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of the British Journal of
Homoeopathy, it is with this reservation . Nevertheless, it is
an instructive paper. He attempts to give unity to his
subject by assuming that the primary and essential action of
Sepia is to cause venous congestion, first in the portal system ,
and then throughout the body ; and that its local effects are
to be ascribed to this general condition . The hypothesis
corresponds well with the curative action of the drug, and
may be used with advantage as a tentative clue to its patho
genetic phenomena.
It does not appear what led Hahnemann to introduce the
juice of the cuttle- fish into medicine. He rightly says that
he was the first so to employ it. But it is a curious fact that
broths and other preparations made from the mollusc itself
were (as Teste points out) used by the ancients in many of
the affections of the generative organs, of the urine, and of
the skin in which Homeopathy now finds the juice so bene
ficial. I need hardly say that for many centuries its use has
 696 SEPIA .

been quite unknown. Here, as in so many other instances,

that holds good which our laureate says
“ Is it so true that second thoughts are best ?
Not first, and third, which are a riper first ? ”

Sepia has found its chief employment in homeopathic

practice in chronic diseases affecting the female sex during
the period of ovario - uterine activity. It is considered especi.
ally suitable to women of dark complexion, of fine delicate
skin with red or yellow tinting here and there, and of great
sensitiveness to all impressions. In such subjects it renders
eminent service in many derangements of the sexual appa
ratus. Its pathogenetic influence over these organs was
strongly displayed in the American provings. All save two
of the women who took part in them reported leucorrhea as
occasioned by the drug ; and in one of them the speculum
revealed prolapsus, retroversion, and ulceration of the os. Its
curative powers move in the same plane. No medicine is
more frequently beneficial in leucorrhæa, especially, I think,
when a symptom of uterine congestion of venous rather than
arterial type. The discharge is either greenish and thick, or
profuse, watery, and offensive. The power of Sepia over
uterine displacements has been set forth especially by Dr.
Mercy Jackson , the foremost female representative of Homeo
pathy in America . You may find her first paper on the
subject in the British Journal of Homeopathy for 1865 ( vol.
xxiii) ; and she reiterates the same experience in a com
munication to the American Institute in 1875. Her first trial
of it was in her own case ; when, suffering from prolapsus,
she seemed to feel the medicine raising the womb into
position, which it did without other aid . She has since
found it equally beneficial in the permanent cure of ante
version and retroversion - in recent cases not even manipula
tion being necessary. These are strong statements ; but
they are made by a trustworthy and experienced observer,
and may not be slighted. She states that sudden attacks of
 SEPIA . 697

prostration and sinking weakness, like fainting, are cha

racteristic of Sepia in such cases. Professor Henderson
mentions such an attack as occurring in a gentleman to
whom the medicine was given for aa cutaneous eruption. Dr.
Guernsey adds, as symptoms indicating Sepia, an empty ,
"gone” feeling in the epigastrium ; and, in the uterine
region itself, a sensation as if the patient must cross the legs
and “ sit close " to keep something from coming out of the
vagina. Sepia has also proved curative in hydrometra ;* and
is recommended strongly by Dr. Bayes for dysmenorrhea
with insufficient loss. I myself find it the best medicine for
gonorrhea in the female, after the acute symptoms have sub
sided . In pregnancy it is often useful to prevent miscarriage,
and to remove such sympathetic effects of uterine irritation
as vomiting and toothache. Lastly, at the climacteric age it
is very helpful in relieving the congestions which are incident
to the failure of the monthly relief of the system . Al
together, no medicine save Pulsatilla is so useful to the weaker
sex as Sepia.
The venous congestion which characterises all these Sepia
affections of the uterus may be primary. But it is very often ,
I think, secondary to abdominal plethora. The uterine veins,
indeed, open into the vena cava ; and are consequently not
directly affected by portal obstruction . But the womb may
be indirectly influenced by such cause through the rectum .
When in this way constipation, prolapsus ani, and hæmor
rhoidal fulness are induced in women, and then the uterine
health becomes impaired, Sepia is indicated for the whole
group of symptoms ; and will do much towards removing
them .
Dr. Bähr recommends Sepia in lithic acid dyspepsia and
hepatic engorgement occurring in females. The connection
of these two maladies has been much insisted upon of
late by Dr. Murchison , in his Croonian Lectures on Func
tional Diseases of the Liver. In the American provings of
* North Amer. Journ. of Hom ., iii, 89.
 698 SEPIA .

Sepia the urates were in great excess in the urine ; and, com
bined with other symptoms, presented a full picture of
lithiasis. This was in the male subject ; so that for this
condition occuring in either sex we have another remedy to
add to Lycopodium .
Sepia has been found useful in some chronic affections of
skin and mucous membrane, as in bronchial catarrh when the
expectoration is greyish -white in colour and salt in taste, and
in “liver-spots," yellow saddles across the bridge of the nose,
and other maculæ. It is also reckoned specific in recent ring.
worm ; Dr. Drury expresses great confidence in it here. The
most important action of Sepia , however, beyond that which
it exerts on the abdominal and pelvic organs, is its power
over migraine. There is a general agreement among the
German writers as to its great value here ; among others
Trinks states that he has made several radical cures by it.
It is in patients of the sex and characteristics already men
tioned, and of venous and bilious constitution, that it proves
most useful. The pain is generally very severe, of rending
character, and increased by any excitement. You will find
several statements and illustrations relative to this matter in
Peters' Treatise on Headaches. Tietze points out the sudor
hystericus, ” a peculiar odorous perspiration in the axillæ and
soles of the feet, as an unerring guide to its selection here;
and Dr. Clotar Müller says * that he has given Sepia with
happy results in other maladies when this symptom was
present.
The following are Dr. Meyer's conclusions :
“ 1. Sepia has its sphere of action in the portal system , in
which it causes obstructions.
2. Most of its symptoms indicate a high degree of venous
congestion.
3. It is characterised by torpidity and depression, often
ending in perfect exhaustion of the vital powers.
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxi, 16.
 SEPIA . 699

4. Hence it is suitable in mild and easy dispositions, and

therefore especially for women .
5. The affections arise and increase in severity, mostly in
the evening and at night, during and immediately after a
meal.
6. The affections either disappear during, or are alleviated
by, active exercise, and by pressure of the painful part.
7. The affections are often accompanied with chilliness.
8. There is great sensitiveness of the skin to cold air. ”
The only real analogue of Sepia with which I am acquainted
is Pulsatilla .
Sepia is a medicine which has been almost exclusively
used in the higher dilutions. I know of no records showing
it even to possess activity from the third downwards. I
myself nearly always employ the twelfth.
 LECTURE XXXIX .

SILICA , SPIGELIA, SPONGIA, STANNUM , STAPAISAGRIA .

My first medicine to -day is one of equally strange origin

with my last of yesterday, and of no less therapeutic virtue.
It is common flint,
Silica .
Thus, and not Silicea, it should be styled : “ silicea" is an
adjective, whose substantive is “ terra ," the two being con
joined in the Chronic Diseases. Chemically, it is of course
silicic acid , an oxide of silicon . In the Pharmacopeia you
will find Hahnemann's directions for obtaining the pure
Silica in powder ; but I suppose that any other approved
process, or even that of Berzelius which makes the flint
soluble, would give us what we want. The ordinary form is
triturated for our use .
The original pathogenesis of Silica appeared in the first
edition of the Chronic Diseases. 567 symptoms are ascribed to.
it there, which seem to have been observed on patients taking
the attenuations from 6 to 12. In the second edition the list
has swelled to 1193, about 150 of the additions being con
tributed by seven others. A short proving of the soluble
Silica, in a preparation of strength about equivalent to our
second dilution, is translated in the twenty -eighth volume of
the British Journal of Homeopathy.
It seems that flint was first used as a medicine by Paracelsus,
and praised by him and his followers in renal and vesical
calculus, in suppression of milk and of urine, and in some
nervous disorders. But its employment had become quite:
 SILICA. 701

unknown when Hahnemann , encouraged by the success of

triturating the otherwise inert metals, applied the process to
it also ; and thereby gave us a most valuable remedy.
The genuine physiological action of Silica is quite unknown .
No Meyer has sought to define its central point, and no asso
ciation has selected the drug for reproving. Dr. Becker's
experiments with silicated water were slight, and, owing to
his imperfect health, gave curative rather than pathogenetic
results. We will turn at once, therefore, to therapeutics,
where Silica plays a well -understood and very important
part.
Silica influences the nutrition rather than the functional
activity of the tissues which come within its range of action :
it is hence suited to organic changes rather than to functional
disorders. Its deep and slow action , moreover, makes it
appropriate to chronic rather than acute diseases ; though we
shall see some of the latter in which it acts rapidly enough .
Teste says it is especially suited to fat people, of a lymphatico
sanguine temperament. Such is its general character ; and
now to descend to particulars.
I. The first great property of Silica is its power over sup
puration . It does not act like Mercury in averting this
process when threatening ; and it is inferior to Hepar sul
phuris for promoting it when inevitable. But when it is once
established , and by its excess or long duration is causing mis
chief, the effect of small internal doses of Silica in checking
it is something magical. You cannot do better than read in
illustration the two cases related by Dr. Noack, jun ., as
translated from L'Art Médical for 1865 in the twenty -third.
volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. Both were
severe and extensive (one caused by dissecting wound) , and
purulent infection was threatening ; but Silica 30, internally
and externally , changed the whole aspect of affairs, and
effected a speedy cure . I have seen it no less efficacious in .
purulent infiltration of the tissues of the neck, following car
buncle : here the sixth dilution internally was all that was
702 SILICA .

given. In carbuncle itself, when the inflammatory stage is

past, and matter has already begun to form , Silica will often
stay all further progress ; and many an abscess will become
absorbed under its use. The same property makes it curative
(according to Teste) in impetigo capitis, and according to
Bähr also ) in chronic purulent bronchorrhæa, such as the
9
““ stone -cutters' phthisis .”
It is probably in virtue of a property of the same kind that
Silica promotes the healing of some ulcers, as in the leg and
on the cervix uteri. It is the “simple ulcer " alone which it
benefits; and its local use is generally necessary , though this
need not be in greater strength than that in which it is pre
scribed constitutionally.
II. From these forms of perverted nutrition we rise to
those of more general character ; and find Silica one of the
chief medicines in the two great dyscrasiæ of childhood
rachitis and scrofula. In Sir William Jenner's graphic account
of the phenomena of rickets, you will find two symptoms
which are very characteristic of Silica , viz. the perspirations
about the head only, and the tenderness of the general sur
face . The tendency which obtains, moreover, to defective
formation of bone and increased growth of cartilage in this
disease calls loudly for Silica . Dr. von Grauvogl points out
that the only chemical difference between cartilage and bone
is that flint is present in the latter but not in the former ;
and he gives a good case of enchondroma of the fingers in
which, acting upon this suggestion, he administered Silica 3
with most satisfactory results. I have already expounded to
you his theory about " tissue remedies," of which this bit of
treatment is an instance . I can speak no less confidently of
the power of the drug when , as in rachitis, the enchon
dromatous tendency is general. I am accustomed to prescribe
it in the earliest manifestations of the diathesis, which are
generally unhealthy evacuations, sweats of the head , and ten
derness of the surface ; and with the best results. In scrofula
we have so eminent a therapeutist as Dr. Jousset proclaiming
 SILICA . 703

it the chief of remedies. I should myself have placed it below

Sulphur and Calcarea : but in Dr. Goullon's treatise on the
disease you will find quite an array of instances of it in which
Silica has proved curative.
It is chiefly when scrofula manifests itself in the bones and
joints that Silica proves its remedy. There is abundant testi
mony to its value in periostitis,when non - syphilitic in origin ;
and it is no less valuable when the bone itself is affected, as
shown by caries or necrosis. In the scrofulous joints — the
“white swelling ” of the old authors — where all commend it,
it is probably most useful when the mischief has begun in the
bones, rather than in the synovial membrane or the cartilages.
If in any of these cases matter is already discharging, do not
neglect the local use of the remedy.
III. In suppuration, and in scrofula and rickets, we have
the more general sphere of action of Silica ; but it has several
miscellaneous properties, which I must now detail to you .
1. It has probably some power over the nutrition of the
nervous centres. I cannot ascertain the forms of paralysis
and epilepsy it is said to have cured. Dr. Black commends it
in cerebral and spinal exhaustion ; with which agrees Teste's
statement that in the nervous disorders for which it is indi .
cated there is often present a sense of great prostration,
causing a craving for food to remove it, and that the sym
ptoms are always the worse for abstinence. Under such cir
cumstances it is good for headaches where the pain ascends
from the nucha through the occiput to the vertex.
2. Dr. Dudgeon has put on record a striking case in which
Silica arrested the progress of inflammation of the lachrymal
sac, * and I have myself had another precisely similar. It
is said , also, to have caused the healing of a lachrymal
fistula .
3. Silica ís of the utmost value in whitlows : it will even
blight them if given early enough, and will sometimes check
their tendency to recurrence. This is my own experience ;
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xiii, 135.
704 SILICA .

but you will find plenty of corroborative cases in Dr. Goullon's

book. In the lower extremities it finds no less frequent
employment in housemaid's knee, where the testimony to its
usefulness is very general.
4. Another use of it in the latter region has regard to
perspiration of the feet. This is an affection of no uncommon
occurrence ; and from the tenderness it causes, and the offen .
sive odour it often exhales, is a cause of considerable distress.
If, moreover , it be violently suppressed , not only are the feet
left cold, but various constitutional affections are apt to
supervene. Of these one of the most frequent is weakness of
sight, and the cause of such weakness has more than once
been found to be opacity of the lens. Now Silica controls this
entire series of occurrences . We have already seen its
influence over the constitutional condition which manifests
itself in perspiration about the head ; and Dr. Guernsey notes,
as one mark of difference between it and Calcarea here, that
the sweat is apt to be offensive. No less power does it dis
play in checking similar perspirations of the feet. But - and
this is the important point — when the exhalation has been
suppressed from without, and systemic troubles have bence
arisen, Silica will make the feet warm and moist again, and
will cause the morbid symptoms to disappear. Some of Dr.
Becker's cases treated by silicated water illustrate these
statements . But their best evidence is a series of instances
recorded by Dr. Gallavardin in L'Art Médical for 1866. The
local use of Atropia, as introduced by Dr. Ringer, to check
these perspirations is becoming so general that we shall
probably have frequent occasion to resort to our Silica as a
remedy for the consequences.
5. Dr. Hering has found Silica of frequent value against
bad effects resulting from revaccination ; and Dr. Cooper
against cutaneous eruptions itching only in the daytime and
evening
So far speaks Homeopathy ; and I think you will admit
that if these statements can be substantiated it possesses in
 SILICA . 705

Silica a most precious remedy. But there is something more

to be said about the drug.
Silica is a constituent of several mineral waters, among
others those of Teplitz and Gastein , where it exists in the
proportion of from three- fifths to three-tenths of a grain in
the pound . But it forms a much larger percentage of the
Missisquoi and Bethesda springs of America, the former of
which contains .016000 parts in a thousand. Now these
waters have a great reputation in their own country for
cancer, tumours, diabetes, and albuminuria . Dr. Tuthill Massy
called our attention to them in the Monthly Homeopathic
Review for 1870 ; and, as they are largely impregnated with
lime, their action was supposed to be due to this ingredient,
and to be of a piece with the experience of Drs. Hood and
Spencer Wells with pulverised oyster shells, of which I have
spoken under Calcarea. But Dr. Fowler Battye has recently
communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Journal * a series of
cases of chronic disease which he has treated with finely
powdered Silica. He does not explain how he was led to
employ it ; but the fact that his cases consist entirely of those
in which the Missisquoi waters have gained their repute
speaks for itself. A side -wind of the high estimation of the
medicine in homeopathic practice may also have influ
enced him ; but this would not account for his choice of
cases, as they are quite outside the range of our employment
of the drug. Dr. Battye's result are very important. The
pains of cancer abate greatly or cease within ten days of
commencing the drug, and sometimes a withering of the
growth occurs. Fibroid tumours of the pelvis greatly
diminish ; and both sugar and albumen disappear from the
urine, with corresponding improvement in the general health .
These last effects seem certainly due to the dynamic action of
the drug ; and Dr. Battye's grain doses night and morning
point in no other direction .
As allied medicines to Silica we have Fluoric and Phos .
* Vol. xx, p. 420.
 704 SILICA .

but you will find plenty of corroborative cases in Dr. Goullon's

book . In the lower extremities it finds no less frequent
employment in housemaid's knee, where the testimony to its
usefulness is very general.
4. Another use of it in the latter region has regard to
perspiration of the feet. This is an affection of no uncommon
occurrence ; and from the tenderness it causes, and the offen
sive odour it often exhales, is a cause of considerable distress.
If, moreover , it be violently suppressed, not only are the feet
left cold, but various constitutional affections are apt to
supervene. Of these one of the most frequent is weakness of
sight, and the cause of such weakness has more than once
been found to be opacity of the lens. Now Silica controls this
entire series of occurrences . We have already seen its
influence over the constitutional condition which manifests
itself in perspiration about the head ; and Dr. Guernsey notes,
as one mark of difference between it and Calcarea here, that
the sweat is apt to be offensive. No less power does it dis
play in checking similar perspirations of the feet. But - and
this is the important point when the exhalation has been
suppressed from without, and systemic troubles have hence
arisen , Silica will make the feet warm and moist again, and
will cause the morbid symptoms to disappear. Some of Dr.
Becker's cases treated by silicated water illustrate these
statements. But their best evidence is a series of instances
recorded by Dr. Gallavardin in L'Art Médical for 1866. The
local use of Atropia, as introduced by Dr. Ringer, to check
these perspirations is becoming so general that we shall
probably have frequent occasion to resort to our Silica as a
remedy for the consequences.
5. Dr. Hering has found Silica of frequent value against
bad effects resulting from revaccination ; and Dr. Cooper
against cutaneous eruptions itching only in time and
evening.
So far speaks Homeopathy ; and I thin cimit
that if these statements can be substantiate is in
 SILICA . 705)

Silica a most precious remedy. But there is something more

to be said about the drug.
Silica is a constituent of several mineral waters, among
others those of Teplitz and Gastein, where it exists in theme
proportion of from three - fifths to three-tenths of a grain in
the pound. But it forms a much larger percentage of this
Missisquoi and Bethesda springs of America , the former
which contains .016000 parts in a thousand. Now them
waters have a great reputation in their own country Box
cancer, tumours, diabetes, and albuminuria. Dr. Tuthill Mouny
called our attention to them in the Monthly Homeopathie
Review for 1870 ; and, as they are largely impregnated with
lime, their action was supposed to be due to this ingredient,
and to be of a piece with the experience of Drs, Hood
Spencer Wells with pulverisedoyster shells, of which I have
spoken under Calcarea. But Dr. Fowler Battye bu very
communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Journal w
casesof chronic disease which he has treated with the
powdered Silica . He does not explain how he web
employ it ; but the fact that his cases consist entirely
in which the Missisquoi waters have gained the
speaks for itself. A side-wind ofthe high estimati
medicine in homeopathic practice may also
enced him ; but this would not account forte
cases, as they are quite outside the range of
of the drug . Dr. Battye's result are very
pains of cancer abate greatly or cease vi
commencing the drug, and sometimes a
growth occurs. Fibroid tumours of
diminish ; and both sugar and albums and
urine, with corresponding improvement
These last effects seem certainly due to
the drug ; and Dr. Battye's grain dan
in no other virostion .
lllied Silica w
706 SPIGELIA .

phoric acids, Calcarca, Hepar sulphuris, Mercurius and

Phosphorus.
The dilutions from the sixth to the thirtieth have been
those mainly employed by homeopathists ; but it may be
that to get Dr. Battye's results we must give his more
material doses .

I come now to a very interesting, and beyond the homeo

pathic range - little-known medicine, the pink -root,
Spigelia .
The tincture is prepared by maceration from the dried root
of the Spigelia anthelmia, the Demerara pink - root, which
was that proved by Hahnemann . The Carolina pink -root
S. Marylandica — seems to have the same properties, and
Hahnemann has admitted symptoms produced by it into his
list.
The proving of Spigelia is in the fifth volume of the
Materia Medica Pura . Thirteen persons co -operated with
Hahnemann therein, and added 525 symptoms to his own
130, and to 17 which he cites from authors. Large doses
seem to have been used, as in his preface he speaks of having
observed the effects of 60, 80, and 100 drops of the tincture;
and the symptoms are very full and pronounced .
Spigelia was introduced from America as a medicine for
destroying lumbrici, and is in use there for such purposes to
the present day, though it is little known elsewhere. Struck ,
probably, by the narcotic effects observed from over -doses,
Hahnemann thought well to prove it ; and in view of the
“ varied and great powers ” it presented predicted that it was
destined to accomplish results much more important than the
destruction of worms. His prophecy has been fulfilled, but
only among his own disciples: the common practice is cont
to know this valuable remedy only as a vermicide.
The effects of over- dosing with Spigelia are somewhat like
those of the mydriatics. There are dilated pupils ; flushed
 SPIGELIA . 707

and swollen face ; quickened pulse ; heat and dryness of

skin ; spasms of the facial muscles, especially of the eyelids ;
and subsultus tendinum , which may even go on to convulsions
and death . The irritation of the nervous centres here dis
played is in the provings shown especially in their sensory
portion . Pain, usually of a shooting character, is stirred up
in many parts of the body, but especially in the head, face,
and chest ; and in all very predominantly on the left side.
Spigelia has hence taken a high place in homeopathic
practice in the treatment of neuralgia , especially of the tri
geminus. When headaches take the form of supra -orbital
neuralgia, especially on the left side ; when the pain recurs
at regular intervals, tends to spread to the face or neck and
to involve the eyes, is aggravated by the least concussion or
motion, but especially by stooping, and is associated with
pale face, restlessness, and palpitation - in such circumstances
Spigelia, in almost any dilution, will prove strikingly curative.
Thirteen cases of the kind are cited in Peters' Treatise on
Headaches ; and others are scattered throughout our journals.
It is no less effectual when the pain is seated in the infra
orbital and maxillary branches of the nerve ; so that Bähr
gives it the first place among the remedies for prosopalgia.
It must be observed that the supra -orbital neuralgia I have
described here is not true migraine : in this disease Spigelia
has accomplished little.
The most marked actions of the drug, however, which
Hahnemann's provings display are those which it exerts upon
theeyesand the heart. The first of the two had been observed
by several of the authors whom he cites. Pain in and over
the eyes, redness and injection of the whites, sparks before
the sight, and distortion and irregular movements of the
balls are symptoms taken from Linning, Chalmers, Wright,
and Browne. His own provers confirm them ; and add still
more decided evidences of inflammation , the severe pain
accompanying which indicates the sclerotica as the tissue
chiefly affected. The symptoms of the heart are those of
708 SPIGELIA .

great pressure on the chest, shooting pains through it and

down the left arm , and violent palpitations.
All this reminds us of Aconite ; and has led to the use of
Spigelia as an auxiliary to that great medicine in several
affections of the eyes and heart. It is especially when these
organs are attacked by acute rheumatism that its powers are
called into play. When “ rheumatic ophthalmia means

sclerotitis, Spigelia will act most satisfactorily in its cure.

Still more important is its control over the cardiac inflamma
tion of rheumatic fever. Decisive testimony is given on this
score hy Fleischmann . He treated, he says, in the Gumpen
dorf Hospital at Vienna fifty -seven cases of rheumatie
“carditis" (evidently including under that name all forms of
inflammation of the heart) with but one death, and Spigelia
was the only medicine employed .* Dr. Russell writes— “ In
the few cases of pericarditis I have treated it has done all
that medicine could do, and I have the utmost confidence in
it .” + Dr. Bayes expresses (and substantiates) f equal satis
faction in its power over endocarditis. Thus Spigelia
becomes a most useful addition to our armamentari um in
combating acute rheumatism . Dr. Phillips even commends
it for the joint affection itself, when it shifts rapidly : the
drug seems, he says,, to centre and steady it.
But you must not suppose that it is only in true rheumatic
affections of the eyes and heart that Spigelia is beneficial.
It is much praised in the primary, neuralgic stage of the
arthritic ophthalmia " of the old ophthalmologists, which
is probably acute glaucoma. Dr. Angell commends it in
several inflammatory conditions of the eyes in scrofulous
children , where, with photophobia , there is severe ciliary
neuralgia. And, as regards the heart, Dr. Bayes relates one
case and Dr. Kendall another of angina pectoris, in which it
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xiv, 23.
of Ibid ., xii, 569.
I Monthly Hom . Review , June, 1867.
§ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 157.
 SPONGIA . 709

proved curative; and Dr. Yeldham has shown what great

benefit a heart chronically damaged by rheumatism can
receive from the free and persistent administration of the
drug.* In all these affections it is the darting, shooting,
stabbing, or lacerating pain which indicates Spigelia , and
which is relieved by it.
I think that Teste is well borne out in saying that Spigelia
-at any rate in infinitesimal doses - acts best in anæmic and
debilitated subjects.
Aconite is the medicine most nearly allied to Spigelia. Like
Cina it bas numerous symptoms in its pathogenesis which
resemble those of helminthiasis ; and it may possibly act in
this condition with the same inexplicably beneficial results
which we have already recognised in Cina itself.
The higher dilutions in neuralgia, the lowest in cardiac
affections, have been those generally given. Hahnemann,
who recommends the thirtieth, says that even a small dose
acts for four weeks, and that its effects go on progressively
increasing for the first week or ten days. This observation,
which of course belongs only to chronic disease, needs con
firmation .

Our next medicine is the Spongia marina tosta, or, more

briefly,
Spongia .
You will observe that it is Spongia tosta, not usta. Hahne
mann justly directs that it shall only be roasted brown , and
not burnt black, so that its natural constituents shall not be
too greatly altered . In this condition it is treated with alcohol
to make a tincture. Triturations would seem a better pre
paration, considering the many mineral ingredients of sponge ;
but they have not been used, and all I shall have to say of
the homeopathic employment of the medicine belongs to it as
made into tincture.
The proving of Spongia is in the sixth volume of the
Annals, iii, 539.
46
710 SPONGIA .

Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 156 symptoms from

Hahnemann, and 235 from ten others. Dr. Hering's volume
of Materia Medica contains an arrangement of the drug
embodying much of the clinical experience gained with it.
1. Burnt sponge has been used, ever since Arnold of
Villanova introduced it in the fourteenth century, as a remedy
for goitre. Hufeland and all the authorities of his time
express the utmost confidence in it ; and Joseph Frank says
that it is as sure as Cinchona in intermittent fever. Since
the discovery that it contained Iodine, and that this agent by
itself displayed marvellous anti -goitrous properties, sponge
has fallen into disuse in ordinary practice,-Vogt alone
among modern therapeutists protesting that it will often cure
when Iodine fails. In homeopathic practice it has not
undergone this neglect. Hahnemann says that the endemic
bronchocele of the inhabitants of valleys, being always
essentially the same affection, ought to be curable by the
same specific ; and this he considers Spongia to be. He states
that one or two doses of the attenuated (he does not specify
how far) tincture suffice for the purpose. If this is spoken
from experience, it ought to be tested more widely than it has
been . Dr. Hering can only find three cases of cure by it in
infinitesimal doses, and of these but one answers to Hahne
mann's description. I know, however, of another ; and
probably many testimonies could be borne to it.
As to the rationale of this action, all that I have said while
upon Iodine holds good. Spongia itself has caused swelling,
pain, and tenderness in existing goitres; and one of Hahne
mann's provers reports- “ The region of the thyroid gland is
as if hardened .” These symptoms, and the cures of the dis
ease — however occasional — wrought by infinitesimal doses,
show that Spongia is sometimes at least homeopathic to it.
When it is preferable to Iodine in its treatment we have not
yet learnt to predict beforehand .
2. Hahnemann proved. Spongia in order to learn its relation
to goitre ; but he thereby brought to light a much more
 SPONGIA . 711

important action of the drug, viz. that which it exerts upon

the larynx. Hoarseness, tenderness, dry and painful cough,
and obstruction of respiration as if a plug were there - these
were the symptoms produced ; and Hahnemann at once in
ferred the applicability of the medicine to membranous croup.
By the time the second edition of his Materia Medica Pura
was published, he could speak of this as the most remarkable
curative application of Spongia which homeopathy had made.
You may first lessen the local inflammation, he says, by a
dose of Aconite ; and you will sometimes, but rarely, need the
aid of Hepar to complete the cure. Such has been the
experience of homeopathists generally, as you may see from
the series of cases given by Dr. Hering, or those collected in
the fifth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. Dr.
Hale has recently taught you the same practice from this
place ; and I can myself recommend you nothing better. The
same process has indeed been gone through with croup as
with goitre. Koch, in 1841 , suggested that Iodine was the
active ingredient of sponge in the former as in the latter case ;
and I have already told you, on the authority of Elb and
Mey hoffer, how actively Iodine can influence the disease. But
so also, as we have seen, can Bromine ; and Spongia contains
them both in a state of natural combination which may be
superior to our artificial preparations of either. It may be
that, as with goitre, Iodine will cure some cases of croup,
Bromine others, and Spongia others again ; and that we may
yet learn how to distinguish them à priori. At present we
must be content to hold the remaining members of the group
in reserve in case of the failure of the first chosen ; and that,
from its traditional claims, may well be Spongia.
But whatever may be thought about membranous croup,
there can be no question as to the eminent value of Spongia
in simple inflammations of the larynx, from the lightest
catarrh to the severest laryngitis, with all their manifesta
tions of hoarseness, aphonia, and barking cough. It is in the
dry form or stage of these affections that Spongia finds its
704 SILICA .

but you will find plenty of corroborative cases in Dr. Goullon's

book. In the lower extremities it finds no less frequent
employment in housemaid's knee, where the testimony to its
usefulness is very general.
4. Another use of it in the latter region has regard to
perspiration of the feet. This is an affection of no uncommon
occurrence ; and from the tenderness it causes, and the offen
sive odour it often exhales, is a cause of considerable distress,
If, moreover, it be violently suppressed, not only are the feet
left cold, but various constitutional affections are apt to
supervene. Of these one of the most frequent is weakness of
sight, and the cause of such weakness has more than once
been found to be opacity of the lens. Now Silica controls this
entire series of occurrences . We have already seen its
influence over the constitutional condition which manifests
itself in perspiration about the head ; and Dr. Guernsey notes,
as one mark of difference between it and Calcarea here, that
the sweat is apt to be offensive. No less power does it dis
play in checking similar perspirations of the feet. But — and
this is the important point — when the exhalation has been
suppressed from without, and systemic troubles have hence
arisen, Silica will make the feet warm and moist again, and
will cause the morbid symptoms to disappear. Some of Dr.
Becker's cases treated by silicated water illustrate these
statements. But their best evidence is a series of instances
recorded by Dr. Gallavardin in L'Art Médical for 1866. The
local use of Atropia, as introduced by Dr. Ringer, to check
these perspirations is becoming so general that we shall
probably have frequent occasion to resort to our Silica as a
remedy for the consequences.
5. Dr. Hering has found Silica of frequent value against
bad effects resulting from revaccination ; and Dr. Cooper
against cutaneous eruptions itching only in the daytime and
evening.
So far speaks Homeopathy ; and I think you will admit
that if these statements can be substantiated it possesses in
 SILICA . 705

Silica a most precious remedy. But there is something more

to be said about the drug.
Silica is a constituent of several mineral waters, among
others those of Teplitz and Gastein , where it exists in the
proportion of from three - fifths to three -tenths of a grain in
the pound . But it forms a much larger percentage of the
Missisquoi and Bethesda springs of America, the former of
which contains .016000 parts in a thousand . Now these
waters have a great reputation in their own country for
cancer, tumours, diabetes, and albuminuria . Dr. Tuthill Massy
called our attention to them in the Monthly Homæopathic
Review for 1870 ; and, as they are largely impregnated with
lime, their action was supposed to be due to this ingredient,
and to be of a piece with the experience of Drs. Hood and
Spencer Wells with pulverised oyster shells, of which I have
spoken under Calcarea . But Dr. Fowler Battye has recently
communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Journal * a series of
cases of chronic disease which he has treated with finely
powdered Silica . He does not explain how he was led to
employ it ; but the fact that his cases consist entirely of those
in which the Missisquoi waters have gained their repute
speaks for itself. A side -wind of the high estimation of the
medicine in homeopathic practice may also have influ .
enced him ; but this would not account for his choice of
cases, as they are quite outside the range of our employment
of the drug. Dr. Battye's result are very important. The
pains of cancer abate greatly or cease within ten days of
commencing the drug, and sometimes a withering of the
growth occurs. Fibroid tumours of the pelvis greatly
diminish ; and both sugar and albumen disappear from the
urine, with corresponding improvement in the general health .
These last effects seem certainly due to the dynamic action of
the drug ; and Dr. Battye's grain doses night and morning
point in no other direction.
As allied medicines to Silica we have Fluoric and Phos
* Vol. xx, p. 420.
706 SPIGELIA .

phoric acids, Calcarca, Hepar sulphuris, Mercurius and

Phosphorus.
The dilutions from the sixth to the thirtieth have been
those mainly employed by homeopathists ; but it may be
that to get Dr. Battye's results we must give his more
material doses .

I come now to a very interesting, and - beyond the homeo

pathic range - little -known medicine, the pink -root,
Spigelia .
The tincture is prepared by maceration from the dried root
of the Spigelia anthelmia , the Demerara pink -root, which
was that proved by Hahnemann. The Carolina pink-root
S. Marylandica - seems to have the same properties, and
Hahnemann has admitted symptoms produced by it into his
list.
The proving of Spigelia is in the fifth volume of the
Materia Medica Pura . Thirteen persons co -operated with
Hahnemann therein, and added 525 symptoms to his own
130, and to 17 which he cites from authors. Large doses
seem to have been used, as in his preface he speaks of having
observed the effects of 60, 80, and 100 drops of the tincture;
and the symptoms are very full and pronounced .
Spigelia was introduced from America as a medicine for
destroying lumbrici, and is in use there for such purposes to
the present day, though it is little known elsewhere. Struck,
probably, by the narcotic effects observed from over -doses,
Hahnemann thought well to prove it ; and in view of the
“ varied and great powers " it presented predicted that it was
destined to accomplish results much more important than the
destruction of worms. His prophecy has been fulfilled, but
only among his own disciples: the common practice is content
to know this valuable remiedy only as a vermicide.
The effects of over -dosing with Spigelia are somewhat like
those of the mydriatics. There are dilated pupils ; Aushed
 SPIGELIA . 707

and swollen face ; quickened pulse ; heat and dryness of

skin ; spasms of the facial muscles, especially of the eyelids ;
and subsultus tendinum , which may even go on to convulsions
and death . The irritation of the nervous centres here dis
played is in the provings shown especially in their sensory
portion. Pain , usually of a shooting character, is stirred up
in many parts of the body, but especially in the head, face,
and chest ; and in all very predominantly on the left side.
Spigelia has hence taken a high place in homeopathic
practice in the treatment of neuralgia, especially of the tri
geminus. When headaches take the form of supra-orbital
neuralgia, especially on the left side ; when the pain recurs
at regular intervals, tends to spread to the face or neck and
to involve the eyes, is aggravated by the least concussion or
motion , but especially by stooping, and is associated with
pale face, restlessness, and palpitation - in such circumstances
Spigelia, in almost any dilution, will prove strikingly curative.
Thirteen cases of the kind are cited in Peters' Treatise on
Headaches ; and others are scattered throughout our journals.
It is no less effectual when the pain is seated in the infra
orbital and maxillary branches of the nerve ; so that Bähr
gives it the first place among the remedies for prosopalgia.
It must be observed that the supra -orbital neuralgia I have
described here is not true migraine : in this disease Spigelia
has accomplished little.
The most marked actions of the drug, however, which
Hahnemann's provings display are those which it exerts upon
theeyesand the heart. The first of the two had been observed
by several of the authors whom he cites. Pain in and over
the eyes, redness and injection of the whites, sparks before
the sight, and distortion and irregular movements of the
balls are symptoms taken from Linning, Chalmers, Wright,
and Browne. His own provers confirm them ; and add still
more decided evidences of inflammation , the severe pain
accompanying which indicates the sclerotica as the tissue
chiefly affected. The symptoms of the heart are those of
708 SPIGELIA .

great pressure on the chest, shooting pains through it and

down the left arm, and violent palpitations.
All this reminds us of Aconite ; and has led to the use of
Spigelia as an auxiliary to that great medicine in several
affections of the eyes and heart. It is especially when these
organs are attacked by acute rheumatism that its powers are
called into play. When “ rheumatic ophthalmia ” means
sclerotitis, Spigelia will act most satisfactorily in its cure .
Still more important is its control over the cardiac inflamma
tion of rheumatic fever. Decisive testimony is given on this
score hy Fleischmann. He treated, he says, in the Gumpen
dorf Hospital at Vienna fifty - seven cases of rheumatic
“ carditis " ( evidently including under that name all forms of
inflammation of the heart ) with but one death, and Spigelia
was the only medicine employed .* Dr. Russell writes— “ In
the few cases of pericarditis I have treated it has done all
that medicine could do, and I have the utmost confidence in
it.” + Dr. Bayes expresses (and substantiates) I equal satis
faction in its power over endocarditis. Thus Spigelia
becomes a most useful addition to our armamentarium in
combating acute rheumatism . Dr. Phillips even commends
it for the joint affection itself, when it shifts rapidly : the
drug seems, he says, to centre and steady it.
But you must not suppose that it is only in true rheumatic
affections of the eyes and heart that Spigelia is beneficial.
It is much praised in the primary, neuralgic stage of the
“ arthritic ophthalmia " of the old ophthalmologists, which
is probably acute glaucoma. Dr. Angell commends it in
several inflammatory conditions of the eyes in scrofulous
children, where, with photophobia , there is severe ciliary
neuralgia. And, as regards the heart, Dr. Bayes relates one
.case and Dr. Kendall & another of angina pectoris, in which it
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xiv, 23.
+ Ibid ., xii, 569.
I Monthly Hom . Review , June, 1867.
§ Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvi, 157.
 SPONGIA . 709

proved curative ; and Dr. Yeldham has shown what great

benefit a heart chronically damaged by rheumatism can
receive from the free and persistent administration of the
drug .* In all these affections it is the darting, shooting,
stabbing, or lacerating pain which indicates Spigelia, and
which is relieved by it.
I think that Teste is well borne out in saying that Spigelia
-at any rate in infinitesimal doses - acts best in anæmic and
debilitated subjects.
Aconite is the medicine most nearly allied to Spigelia. Like
Cina it has numerous symptoms in its pathogenesis which
resemble those of helminthiasis ; and it may possibly act in
this condition with the same inexplicably beneficial results
which we have already recognised in Cina itself.
The higher dilutions in neuralgia , the lowest in cardiac
affections, have been those generally given. Hahnemann,
who recommends the thirtieth, says that even a small dose
acts for four weeks, and that its effects go on progressively
increasing for the first week or ten days. This observation ,
which of course belongs only to chronic disease, needs con
firmation .

Our next medicine is the Spongia marina tosta, or, more

briefly,
Spongia .
You will observe that it is Spongia tosta, not usta . Hahne
mann justly directs that it shall only be roasted brown , and
not burnt black, so that its natural constituents shall not be
too greatly altered. In this condition it is treated with alcohol
to make a tincture. Triturations would seem a better pre
paration, considering the many mineral ingredients of sponge ;
but they have not been used, and all I shall have to say of
the homeopathic employment of the medicine belongs to it as
made into tincture.
The proving of Spongia is in the sixth volume of the
* Annals, iii, 539.
46
710 SPONGIA .

Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 156 symptoms from

Hahnemann, and 235 from ten others. Dr. Hering's volume
of Materia Medica contains an arrangement of the drug
embodying much of the clinical experience gained with it.
1. Burnt sponge has been used, ever since Amold of
Villanova introduced it in the fourteenth century, as a remedy
for goitre. Hufeland and all the authorities of his time
express the utmost confidence in it ; and Joseph Frank says
that it is as sure as Cinchona in intermittent fever. Since
the discovery that it contained Iodine, and that this agent by
itself displayed marvellous anti-goitrous properties, sponge
has fallen into disuse in ordinary practice ,-Vogt alone
among modern therapeutists protesting that it will often cure
when Iodine fails. In homeopathic practice it has not
undergone this neglect. Hahnemann says that the endemic
bronchocele of the inhabitants of valleys, being always
essentially the same affection, ought to be curable by the
same specific; and this he considers Spongia to be. He states
that one or two doses of the attenuated (he does not specify
how far) tincture suffice for the purpose . If this is spoken
from experience, it ought to be tested more widely than it has
been. Dr. Hering can only find three cases of cure by it in
infinitesimal doses, and of these but one answers to Hahne
mann's description. I know, however, of another ; and
probably many testimonies could be borne to it.
As to the rationale of this action, all that I have said while
upon Iodine holds good. Spongia itself has caused swelling,
pain, and tenderness in existing goitres ; and one of Hahne
mann's provers reports— “ The region of the thyroid gland is
as if hardened ." These symptoms, and the cures of the dis
ease—however occasional - wrought by infinitesimal doses,
show that Spongia is sometimes at least homeopathic to it.
When it is preferable to Iodine in its treatment we have not
yet learnt to predict beforehand .
2. Hahnemann proved. Spongia in order to learn its relation
to goitre ; but he thereby brought to light a much more
 SPONGIA . 711

important action of the drug, viz. that which it exerts upon

the larynx. Hoarseness, tenderness, dry and painful cough,
and obstruction of respiration as if a plug were there — these
were the symptoms produced ; and Hahnemann at once in
ferred the applicability of the medicine to membranous croup .
By the time the second edition of his Materia Medica Pura
was published, he could speak of this as the most remarkable
curative application of Spongia which homeopathy had made.
You may first lessen the local inflammation, he says, by a
dose of Aconite ; and you will sometimes, but rarely, need the
aid of Hepar to complete the cure. Such has been the
experience of homeopathists generally, as you may see from
the series of cases given by Dr. Hering, or those collected in
the fifth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. Dr.
Hale has recently taught you the same practice from this
place ; and I can myself recommend you nothing better. The
same process has indeed been gone through with croup as
with goitre. Koch, in 1841 , suggested that Iodine was the
active ingredient of sponge in the former as in the latter case ;
and I have already told you, on the authority of Elb and
Meyhoffer, how actively Iodine can influence the disease. But
so also, as we have seen, can Bromine; and Spongia contains
them both in a state of natural combination which may be
superior to our artificial preparations of either. It may be
that, as with goitre, Iodine will cure some cases of croup,
Bromine others, and Spongia others again ; and that we may
yet learn how to distinguish them à priori. At present we
must be content to hold the remaining members of the group
in reserve in case of the failure of the first chosen ; and that,
from its traditional claims, may well be Spongia .
But whatever may be thought about membranous croup,
there can be no question as to the eminent value of Spongia
in simple inflammations of the larynx, from the lightest
catarrh to the severest laryngitis, with all their manifesta
tions of hoarseness, aphonia, and barking cough. It is in the
dry form or stage of these affections that Spongia finds its
712 SPONGIA .

place ; and it rapidly promotes resolution. I have seen it so

prompt in removing laryngeal symptoms in a phthisical
patient that I can well believe the reports of its value in
laryngeal phthisis. Indeed, Spongia bears to phthisis pul
monalis itself the same relation as Iodine — both Neumann
and Hufeland warning that its incautious use is liable to set
up this affection, in which Dr. Hering esteems it highly as a
remedy. The cough of Spongia is said to have the charac
teristic of being relieved by eating and drinking.
3. Hahnemann observed from Spongia aching swelling of
the testes and a similar condition of the spermatic cord . Dr.
Hering gives several cases of chronic orchitis and epididymitis
in which the drug proved highly efficacious.
4. But the most important action of Spongia after that
which it exerts on the larynx is displayed in the cardiac
sphere. This was first brought to light by Dr. P. P. Wells, of
Brooklyn. A sufferer from organic affection of the heart ate
and swallowed a piece of newly roasted sponge. It produced
a frightful attack of pain , palpitation , and dyspnea, with
livid lips and fear of approaching death. On recovering from
this a remarkable relief of her wonted cardiac distress ensued,
and lasted for several weeks. Dr. Wells was thus led to give
it, in minuter doses, in several cases of heart disease. He is
led to think it the most valuable medicine we have where
there is fibrinous deposit upon the valves . He states that he
has repeatedly found the bellows -murmur disappear, as well
as the subjective symptoms become relieved , under its use.
Sudden waking in the night, with a sense of suffocation, is the
symptom which especially leads him to its choice. In another
case it greatly relieved the cough and other concomitants of
an aneurism of the descending aorta .
5. Teste's recommendation of Spongia in all serous inflam
mation - pleurisy, pericarditis, peritonitis, &c.—with or without
effusion has not been confirmed .
Allied medicines are Iodine and Bromine (of course ), Hepar
sulphuris, Kuli bichromicum , and Selenium .
 STANNUM . 713

In croup and laryngeal affections Spongia seems to act well

in all dilutions : I myself find the first and second decimal to
:

answer every purpose . In cardiac disease the higher attenua

tions alone have yet been used.
We will speak now of metallic tin ,
Stannum .
We use the purest tin-foil ; and, having reduced it to powder,
triturate it with milk- sugar for medicinal use.
The proving of Stannum appears in the sixth volume of the
Materia Medica Pura . It contains 204 symptoms from Hahne
mann ,5 from authors, and 451 from seven fellow -observers.
The pathogenesis in the Chronic Diseases is but a repro
duction of this, with the preface abridged and the notes
omitted ; so that it would be better if translators would give
us the original draught.
Stannum is one of the few Hahnemannian medicines
regarding which we have any information as to the doses used
in the proving. In a note to Gross's first communication , we
are told that his symptoms were obtained from a male and a
female prover, taking increasing doses of a trituration of five
grains of tin to a hundred grains of milk-sugar till the man
had consumed three and the woman two grains of the metal.
The inference that the rest of the proving was conducted with
similar quantities is supported from another source. In the
case of Stannum alone among medicines does Hahnemann
recommend a lower potency than before to be used. Writing
so late as 1827, he says that he has hitherto used the sixth
attenuation ; but now finds it unnecessary to go above the
third.
Tin is known to modern medicine only as a vermifuge. It
is generally supposed to act mechanically ; but Hahnemann
showed that such an hypothesis was untenable upon the facts
known in his day, and it has since been affirmed that water in
which tin has been boiled (or cooled after heating) is
anthelmintic, and that several compounds of the metal have
714 STANNUM .

the same property. Hahnemann thinks that tin acts in tape.

worm by stupefying the parasite, and so enabling purgatives
to dislodge it : he asserts that even in the third trituration it
produces this effect. Teste says that both lumbrici and
ascarides come away often in large quantities after the use of
the dynamized metal.
The frequent causation of nervous disorders — as epilepsy
and chorea — by worms led to the use of tin in instances of the
kind where such origin was suspected . But it not unfre
quently happened that no worms were brought away , and yet
epileptic fits were much alleviated . Thus the medicine grew
in favour for a time as directly influencing the disease ; and
Hahnemann can justly cite Fothergill (though not Monro ) as
commending it, and Quincy as saying that we possess no more
potent anti-epileptic than this metal. Hahnemann's 409th
symptom among the “ Observations of Others, ” if taken ( as
it is in some translations and compilations) without its bracket
and note, would seem to show that tin was capable of pro
ducing actual epilepsy. The observation he cites is one of a
boy, who suffered frequently from convulsive attacks, espe
cially in the morning fasting. Tin was given to destroy the
worms which were supposed to be present ; and thereupon the
fits increased and multiplied to perfect epilepsy. More satis
factory is the evidence of the neurotic influence of tin derived
from the observed effects of the chloride. Pereira's account of
this salt is naïvely homeopathic. “ When taken as a poison,"
he writes, “ it causes convulsive movements of the muscles of
the extremities and of the face, and sometimes paralysis. It
has been used .... as an anti-spasmodic in epilepsy, chorea,
and other convulsive diseases, and as a stimulant to paralysed
muscles in paraplegia ." Orfila, who is Pereira's authority for
the physiological part of this statement, relates one instance
in which a cataleptic state was induced in a dog by the intro
duction of this salt.
In homeopathic practice, the neurotic properties of Stannum
have been turned to effect mainly in certain neuralgiæ . It
 STANNUM . 715

produced a good deal of nerve- pain among its provers. Hahne

mann says that this is usually of a " drawing pressing or
pressive drawing " character; and Gross notes as a general
condition of such pains that “ they commence lightly , increase
gradually and to a very high degree, and decrease again as
slowly.” From these indications Stannum has often been
given with success in neuralgia (chiefly supra -orbital) and
headache. You will find some interesting cases of the kind
by one of our Russian colleagues, Dr. Villers, in the seven
teenth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, and
another by Dr. Dudgeon in the twenty - ninth volume. I have
myself found it very beneficial in migraine having this cres
cendo decrescendo character, the vomiting supervening at the
acme . Another nervous disorder in whose treatment Stannum
has found a place is hypochondriasis. Albrecht and Geisch
läger found it useful here, says Hahnemann ; and he points to
some of his provers' symptoms as very like the abdominal
spasms and diaphragmatic pains of these subjects. He also
says that it is indicated by intolerable uneasiness, so that the
patient knows not what to do with himself. Hartmann, in
harmony with this, urgently recommends Stannum in hypo
chondriasis where the abdominal pains are relieved by walking
about, while on the other hand the sufferer is so weak that he
is fain to rest, whereupon his distress returns.
Before the anthelmintic and neurotic properties of tin were
known, it was in some repute as an anti-hectic, and as a remedy
9)
for what Hahnemann calls “ ulcerous phthisis.” (A prepara
tion of it constituted the “ anti -hecticum Poterii,” and is much
commended by Muraltus, Hoffmann, Vogel, and others.) He
means chronic bronchial and pulmonary conditions charac
terised by profuse muco -purulent discharges and general col
liquative symptoms. He quotes Stahl's statement that tin
66
causes marasmus and phthisis,” and points to several of the
symptoms observed by himself as suggesting the same action.
Thus the use of the metal in such conditions has survived in
the homeopathic school, while it has become unknown else
716 STAPHISAGRIA .

where. We regard it as indicated by great abundance of the

sputa , especially if they have also a greenish colour and
sweetish taste ; and also by a sense of great weakness and
emptiness of the chest, so that a slight exertion of voice causes
much fatigue. Dr. Meyhoffer has found much benefit from
it in dilatation of the bronchi. Even in phthisical cases where
it cannot cure, Stannum will often do a good deal to moderate
the exhausting sweats and expectoration.
While homeopathy has preserved this use of the drug, it
has initiated another. The sensations experienced by a female
prover have suggested its use in relieving the sensation of
“ bearing down " so often complained of by women , and even
in benefiting prolapsus uteri. I have hardly ever known it
fail to effect the former purpose ; and I have been quite
astonished at its power over prolapsus. It seems to strengthen
the uterine ligaments.*
Sepia in the two latter spheres of action, and Argentum,
Cuprum , and Zincum as neurotics, are analogues of Stannum .
While Hahnemann's experience seems to show that there
is no advantage in going beyond the third, I must say that,
like Drs. Bayes and Drury , I have seen higher dilutions act
well.

We have as our last medicine to -day one which we have

turned to more noble purposes than that of destroying lice,
the " stavesacre," Delphinium
Staphisagria.
The tincture is prepared by maceration from the seeds.
The proving is in the fifth volume of the Materia Medica
Pura . It contains 283 symptoms from Hahnemann, and 438
from twelve others.
Up to Hahnemann's time Staphisagria was little known
save as an external application for phthiriasis — a use of it
which, in the form of the oil of the seeds (ascertained by Mr.
* This observation, however, I find not to be ner . Hoffmann quotes
Muraltus as saying that tin “ uterum corroborat. ”
 STAPHISAGRIA . 717

Squire to be the active element ), still survives. Dioscorides,

however, had praised it as a masticatory for toothache ; and
Schulze had experienced a frightful aggravation of the pain
when so employing it. Hahnemann was thus, perhaps, led to
prove it ; and he found it so powerfully to affect the healthy
body that he thought it likely to prove a great medicine. His
pathogenetic results have been substantiated by the active
properties found to belong to the two alkaloids of stavesacre
-delphinine and staphisagrine ; but his therapeutic expecta
tions have hardly been realised as yet. Staphisagria, in fact,
is one of those druge which one hardly ever thinks of in con
nection with the treatment of the ordinary forms of disease.
Every now and then , however, the consultation of a repertory
leads us to choose it as the simillimum to the group of sym
ptoms, and in time, perhaps, it will attain aa forward place in
therapeutics ; for its provings evidence its possession ofa very
extensive range of influence. In the mean time I would call
attention to its effects upon the genito -urinary organs.
Putting them all together, they present a perfect picture of
that form of spermatorrhoea so well described by Lallemand ,
in which the prostatic portion of the urethral mucous mem
brane is the seat of chronic inflammatory irritation , which
sometimes extends into the ejaculatory canals and seminal
ducts. I have used it several times in this malady with great
benefit. The provings, moreover, confirm the suggestion of
the experience of Dioscorides and Schulze as to the specific
influence of the drug on the teeth and gums. The teeth ache
and decay, get loose, and even show black streaks in their
substance under its use : the gums become retracted and
white.
The writer who seems to know most of the curative virtues
of Staphisagria is M. Teste. He gives a long list - like those
of Hahnemann for his antipsorics — of morbid conditions in
which it has proved beneficial. Of these I may especially
mention nausea from vertigo, as in sea-sickness. From
experiencing this combination of symptoms in himself he was
718 STAPHISAGRIA.

led to try the medicine in the mal de mer. Of twenty persons

whom he supplied with a single dose of three drops of the
sixth dilution when starting on a voyage, and from whom he
received a report of the result, five only derived no benefit.
In seven the trouble was absolutely avoided , and the remaining
eight expressed themselves as greatly relieved . The medicine
must be taken, he says, before vomiting has set in, at the
moment when the dizziness and nausea commence . He also
speaks of it as the best remedy for another form of sympa
thetic nausea and vomiting, viz. that of pregnancy. Dr.
Phillips, who gives the drug in doses of from five to twenty
drops of the tincture, confirms these recommendations of
Teste’s, and also those which he makes of it in regard to
ophthalmia tarsi, chronic amenorrhea, periostitis, and shifting
pains in the long bones.
Dr. Turnbull found delphinia, when taken internally , to
cause heat and tingling in various parts of the body ; and
used it with benefit in some forms of neuralgia. Dr. Bayes
praises Staphisagria itself in this malady, having once
obtained striking relief from it in tic-douloureux itself. All
this reminds us of Aconite ; and it is like Aconite that
(according to Böhm ) delphinia affects the heart. It has
been given as a “ sedative " to the circulation in acute
rheumatism .
Teste classes Staphisagria with Causticum , Coffea, and
Cocculus ; to which I should add Kreasote.
The dilutions from the sixth to the thirtieth have given
most satisfaction .
 LECTURE XL .

STRAMONIUM - SULPHUR .

We will begin to - day's lecture with aa few words upon the

thorn -apple, Datura
Stramonium .
The tincture is prepared from the entire herb in the usual
manner .
There is a pathogenesis of Stramonium in the third volume
of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains 96 symptoms
from Hahnemann, 90 from two others, and 383 from authors .
Among these last I must caution any dependence on citations
from Stoerck and Greding, as they were taken, in the same
wholesale way which we have heretofore seen , from patients
treated by them. Dr. Hering has given us a very full arrange
ment of the symptomatology of Stramonium in his Materia
Medica , incorporating many fresh cases of poisoning. The
English materials of this nature which he has used may be
read at length in Dr. Berridge's Pathogenetic Record, now
publishing as a supplement to the British Journal of Homoeo
pathy.
To the therapeutists of the old school Stramonium must
be a greater puzzle than even Hyoscyamus. Pereira's article
on the drug might have been written by an avowed homæo
pathist. It is “used to produce intoxication for licentious
purposes," i.e. as an aphrodisiac; and— “ Wendt used it to
lessen venereal excitement, as in nymphomania . ” In fatal
doses “ the leading symptoms are ... delirium (usually
maniacal) ;" and— “ the diseases in which Stramonium has
been principally used are mania and epilepsy . ” “In some
720 STRAMONIUM .

cases of spasmodic asthma smoking the herb has given at

least temporary relief ; " but_ “ the practice requires great
caution , as it has proved highly injurious. ... Aggravation
of the dyspnea . . . is one of the evils said to have been
induced . ” We may fairly look under these circumstances to
the systematic account of the drug which Homeopathy
enables us to give.
Stramonium acts chiefly on the brain , and in a manner
closely resembling that of Belladonna and Hyoscyamus. The
delirium it causes is more furious than that of either : but
the determination of blood to the head, while greater than
that of Hyoscyamus, is less than and not so inflammatory as
that of Belladonna . With the delirium are hallucinations;
dilated pupil ; amaurosis ; diminished general sensibility ;
extreme mobility of the muscular system , with loss of
voluntary control ; sexual excitement ; spasmodic dysphonia
and dysphagia ; great dryness of throat ; and frequently a
bright red eruption over the body. If the poisoning goes on ,
congestive sopor and general palsy set in. I have already
discussed the rationale of these phenomena, when speaking
of Belladonna. Stramonium is evidently an almost pure
neurotic. The only parts besides the brain which show any
signs of tissue -irritation are the throat and the skin.
Correspondingly, the use of Stramonium as a therapeutic
agent has been nearly exclusively confined to affections of the
brain and nervous system . The only exception is scarlatina ;
in some forms of which Stramonium may be preferable to
Belladonna . The distinguishing characteristics of the two
drugs in relation to this malady are well given by Dr
P. P. Wells, in the fifth volume of the American Homeo
pathic Review . He lays most stress on the presence of an
extreme degree of nervous erethism - convulsions, trembling,
restlessness, & c . — as indicating Stramonium .
There are few neuroses in which Stramonium is not more
or less useful. It is our chief remedy in acute mania, to
which it is more homeopathic than the inflammatory Bella
 STRAMONIUM . 721

donna ; and is hardly less valuable in delirium tremens, when

assuming the active form described as “ mania -à -potu " by the
older writers . The constant association of hallucinations
with its delirium makes it very appropriate here, and
wherever else they occur. You will not be surprised that a
homeopathist should speak thus ; but it is curious to hear
the same practice advocated, and on the same grounds, by an
eminent alienist of the old school—I refer to Dr. Moreau.*
Stramonium is sometimes indicated for the cerebral mani
festations of typhus and typhoid, but less often than the
other mydriatics and Opium. But in nymphomania and in
puerperal mania it stands highest among remedies, owing to
its special action on the sexual functions. In epilepsy brought
on by a fright, and yet recent, it may prove very useful. It
is, as Hahnemann points out, exquisitely homeopathic to
hydrophobia, evin more so than Belladonna. In a child of
Dr. Duffin's poisoned by the seeds,t not only were the
symptoms during life strikingly analogous to those of this
disease , but after death " a slight unusual blush pervaded
the pharynx and esophagus to about one third of their
extent ; the larynx was similarly injected, and the rima
glottidis thickened and very turgid .” A missionary in China
some time ago wrote to say that Stramonium is regarded
there as a specific for hydrophobia. A decoction of a handful
of the leaves is given in one dose : immediate aggravation of
the symptoms occurs, followed by cure.
Nor is Stramonium less beneficial when the nervous
erethism , just stopping short of inflammation, which these
maladies imply within the cranium , manifests itself in the
spinal cord . In chorea it is one of the best vegetable
medicines ; though it rarely cures cases of any standing
without the aid of the minerals Arsenic, Cuprum , Zinc, &c.
Stammering is a kind of local chorea ; and in this affection
great good may often be obtained by the persevering use of
Stramonium. The recommendation is Teste's ; and it is
* See Trousseau and Pidoux, sub voce. + See Berridge, Case 2.
722 SULPHUR.

sustained by many published cases . * Dr. Cooper has found

the drug curative of a similar morbid state in the bladder.
It is, like Ignatia, frequently indicated in spinal convulsions :
you may read a good case of the kind by Trinks, where they
originated from concussion of the spine, in the nineteenth
volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. But it goes
beyond Ignatia in reaching also to true eclampsia, as infantile
and puerperal convulsions. In the latter Dr. Guernsey gives
the following indication : - " parturient women show such
signs of fear as to cause them to look frightened and to
shrink back from the first objects they see after opening their
eyes. If they have had no spasms, they soon will have after
betraying such symptoms, unless Stramonium be immediately
administered .”
You will find abundant evidence of these and other cura .
tive powers of Stramonium in Dr. Hering's arrangement.
As allied medicines, besides its blood -sisters Hyoscyamus
and Belladonna, Stramonium has Agaricus, Chamomilla,
Cannabis indica, and Ignatia.
For dose, I am very well satisfied with the dilutions from
3 to 6 .
I shall now occupy all the rest of your time with a medicine
which, if not the most important, is perhaps the most fre
quently used of all we have
Sulphur.
The washed “ flowers of sulphur ” of commerce , again
washed in distilled water, are used in our pharmacy ; and are
of course prepared by trituration . A " tincture of sulphur "
is also in use : it is made with absolute alcohol, which
dissolves nearly one per cent. If this form is desired, it must
be prescribed as such . It is now only used in its primary
preparation, which is designated as the “tinctura for
tissima ” ; but at one time Hahnemann employed it for
making the subsequent attenuations.
* Brit. Journ. of Hum., xv, 399 .
 SULPHUR . 723

The pathogenesis of Sulphur appeared first in the fourth

volume of the Materia Medica Pura. In the second edition of
that work (1825) it contains 755 symptoms from Hahnemann
himself, and 60 from his son Frederick and some authors.
As the medicine is recommended to be given in the second
trituration , it is probable that the symptoms were obtained
from this or lower potencies ; though their subjects are
doubtful. In the first edition of the Chronic Diseases (1830)
another pathogenesis is presented, to which Hahnemann adds
upwards of 300 symptoms; and in the second edition (1839)
the list bas swollen to 1969, a few only of the additions being
taken from a proving by Nenning which had appeared in the
third volume of the Arzneimittellehre of Hartlaub and
Trinks. The source of these later materials is obvious, as
Sulpbur was in constant use at the time in the treatment of
chronic affections. Much more satisfactory information is
supplied by the splendid re-proving undertaken by the
Austrian Society, and reported by Dr. Wurmb in the fourth
volume of its journal ( Esterreichische Zeitschrift). It is
translated in the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the
British Journal of Homoeopathy. Twenty - four persons took
part in the experiments, which were conducted with full doses
of the crude substance and of the tincture, as well as with
the attenuations. Dr. Casanova has also enriched the patho.
genesis of the drug by some observations of the effects of the
sulphureous waters of Harrogate.
Sulphur has long been reputed as a stimulant to the capil
lary circulation of the skin and mucous membranes, and to
the venous system of the pelvis. Dr. Wurmb's proving con
firms and illustrates the ancient opinion. The drug excited
a peculiar itching of the whole surface, giving an agreeable
sensation on rubbing or scratching, and increased notably by
the warmth of bed . With this were various eruptions, mostly
papular, but sometimes vesicular, and occasionally closely
resembling that of scabies. Boils, too, frequently result from
* Brit. Journ. of Hom., xxi, 353.
 724 SULPHUR .

the use of Sulphur. I know of a lady who accompanied her

husband to Harrogate ; and , although herself in good health,
joined him in drinking the waters. When she returned home,
she came under treatment covered with boils. After the skin,
the mucous membranes feel most severely the influence of
Sulphur, especially those of the eyes ( conjunctiva oculi et
palpebrarum ), bronchi, urethra, and rectum . Burning, with
itching and mucous discharge, are the characteristic symptoms
here.
Besides these more general effects, the use of Sulphur pro
duces other pretty constant phenomena, as follows :
1. There is a decided determination of blood to the head.
Fulness with aching was experienced by nearly all the provers :
vertigo by some. The Harrogate waters, if drunk largely and
incautiously, appear to be capable of bringing on apoplexy.
Part and parcel of the above is the erysipelatoid inflammation
of the nose so frequent among the provers, and mentioned
also by Dr. Casanova.
2. The sexual organs are always excited by Sulphur, eren
to swelling of the external parts. The catamenia in one prover
came on profusely ; and were black , clotted, and gluey, as
with Crocus.
3. Although Sulphur in massive doses is a mild aperient,
its dynamic action is manifested by constipation, from which
nearly all the provers suffered. The alternative, diarrhoea, is
very rare .
4. Rheumatoid pains were very common among the provers;
most of whom also were troubled by awaking early in the
morning, and finding it impossible to go to sleep again.
5. In two provers there was painful swelling of the tongue.
Unless we add to these the countless symptoms of the
pathogenesis in the Chronic Diseases, we seem to have but a
narrow basis on which to rest the vast fabric of the therapeutic
applications of Sulphur. But this drug has attained a unique
place among homeopathic medicines, of which the relation of
Mercury to syphilis affords the only — and that a faint
 SULPHUR . 725

resemblance . This is owing to the famous " psora theory " of

Hahnemann, of which I must here take notice.
The first volume of Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases is
devoted to an exposition of this theory of his. He begins by
assigning one eighth of these maladies to syphilis and its ally
sycosis. He points out that each of these diseases depends
upon a specific and contagious " miasm ." This, being received
into the organism , after a period of incubation developes an
external sign - the chancre and the condyloma respectively.
If these are left alone, or cured from within by small quantities
of their appropriate specific (Mercury in the one case, Thuja
or Nitric acid in the other) , no general evils result. On the
other hand, the suppression of the external sign is followed
by the well-known constitutional symptoms. The maladies
thus set up are far more difficult to cure, and are only curable
at all by the same or similar specifics -- selected not merely on
the ground of their homeopathicity to the existing symptoms,
but also because of their relation to the primary taint. Thus
( the illustration is my own) it would be useless to attempt to
cure a syphilitic angina with Belladonna, or a syphilitic
psoriasis with Arsenic.
In the remaining seven eighths of chronic diseases, Hahne
mann says that he found the same impossibility of effecting a
permanent cure with the common homeopathic specifics. He
sought therefore for some constitutional miasm or miasms
which should explain the protean changes and inveterate
duration of these maladies, as the syphilitic poison explained
the character of the disorders resulting therefrom. In the
common itch (psora or scabies) he thought he had found what
he sought. Numerous authors testified to the evils resulting
from repercussion of the itch eruption - these evils including
nearly every ill to which flesh is heir. Again, many of his
chronic patients confessed to having had the itch, and in
many others he ascertained the same fact by inquiry of parents
and nurses. The itch was a specific disease, very contagious,
having a period of incubation after infection , and then mani.
47
726 SULPHUR.

festing itself by one or more vesicles at the point of contact, -

in all these features resembling syphilis and sycosis. Unable
to discover any other chronic miasm but this to account for
the host of chronic diseases which were neither syphilitic nor
sycosic, Hahnemann propounded the theory that they were
all psoric. Hence followed the treatment. Recent itch could
nearly always be cured in a reasonably short time, by one or
more infinitesimal doses of Sulphur ; and the same medicine
was curative of some of the consequences of the suppression
of the eruption. But these were too multifarious to be homæo
pathically covered by any one remedy. Hence a number of
other medicines were, on various grounds, * classed with it
as “ anti-psorics ; ” and with these, selected according to the
law of similars, all chronic non - venereal diseases were to be
combated.
I think that the above is a fair presentation of Hahnemann's
theory. For aa fuller account of it, and of the criticisms it has
provoked, I may refer you to Dr. Dudgeon's Lectures on
Homeopathy. But I would strongly recommend you to read
Hahnemann's own exposition of his doctrine. It is a marvel
of erudition, of thought, and of reasoning , -if only the pre
misses were sound.
But here is the fatal flaw . Hahnemann lived at a time
when the parasitic nature of scabies had been forgotten. His
contemporaries Rayer and Biett regarded it as questionable ;
and Hoffmann , Juncker, Wenzel, and Autenrieth had gone
before him in tracing numerous diseases to the repercussion
of the eruption. Now , however, no reasonable doubt can exist
but that the reception of the acarus is the proximate cause of
the whole phenomena of scabies. The disease is invariably
treated by external applications, chiefly Sulphur ointment;
and the extensive experience of such men as Hebra and
Erasmus Wilson may be taken as conclusive when they say ,
that they have never seen any ill effects from the practice.
* See Chronic Diseases ( Hempel's transl .) I, 185.
 SULPHUR. 727

Is there then no truth in Hahnemann's theory ? Just the

reverse ; as I shall now attempt to show.
Although Hahnemann undoubtedly based the logical super
structure of his theory upon the distinct entity, scabies, yet
ever and anon he includes other cutaneous affections under its
name. Thus he considers the ancient leprosy to hold the
same relation as scabies to chronic diseases ; and in another
place he speaks of “ tinea capitis, crusta lactea, herpes, & c., "
as “ varieties ” of itch. He is thus standing upon the truth
which is every day becoming more generally recognised, that
many cutaneous diseases are external manifestations of a con
stitutional taint. To say nothing of the syphilitic exanthemata ,
who does not know how frequently the gouty, rheumatic, or
scrofulous diathesis comes before us represented solely by an
eruption on the skin ? Nor would it be denied that the sup
pression of such eruptions from without would greatly favour
the development of internal disease . The same thing would
happen , though more slowly and mildly, as that which follows
the retrocession or even the non -development of the rash in
the acute exanthemata. Again, there is no doubt but that
the repulsion by external applications of any cutaneous erup
tion is liable to cause disorder of the internal organs in
its immediate neighbourhood. Lallemand reports cases of
spermatorrhoa thus induced,* Beer of amaurosis,t and
Weitenweber of aphonia 1-in the two latter the itch itself
being the esanthem in question. So much evidence of this
kind has accumulated, that the French pathologists have re
discovered for themselves the psora theory, in a modified
form . Men like Chomel and Gueneau de Mussy speak of a
herpetie (" dartreux " ) diathesis, to which they ascribe
numerous local affections and chronic maladies.
Now the point of main interest to us here is, that for all
* On Spermatorrhea, p. 83.
+ Brit . Journ. of Hom ., iii, 253.
I Ibid ., vi, 314.
§ Ibid ., xvii, 53.
728 SULPHUR .

these disorders alternating with skin eruptions or resulting

from their suppression , Sulphur is confessedly the principal
remedy. Beer's amaurosis was removed by it — the eruption
returning Dr. de Mussy recommends the Eaux Bonnes
(which are sulphur springs) as the best treatment for the
chronic throat affections he traces to “ herpetism ." Lallemand
cures bis cases by sulphuretted baths. Dr. Casanova main
tains that the reason why Harrogate waters cure some cases,
and utterly fail in others apparently similar, is that in the
former the symptoms may be traced back to the suppression
of some eruption, while in the latter they have originated
from other causes. He gives two pairs of cases strikingly
illustrative and confirmatory of his doctrine. And in chronic
gout, rheumatism , and scrofula - diatheses in which the skin
is so frequently involved - Sulphur stands at the head of our
remedies : while in other constitutional maladies, such as
cancer, rachitis, and tuberculosis, which have no such cutaneous
determination, it plays no useful part.
This is the “ antipsoric " action of Sulphur. You will see
that it is not peculiar to the homeopathic school, though it is
there that it has received its fullest development, both theo.
retical and practical. Of the theory of it I have spoken at
sufficient length : let me now turn to the practice.
I. There are very few chronic diseases in which the treat.
ment may not be advantageously commenced by a few doses
or a short course of Sulphur. I shall speak of rheumatism
presently ; but as regards gout, Dr. Acworth , who made this
malady a special study, says that he knows of no better medi
cines for the diathesis than Sulphur and Calcarea. In scrofula
in all its manifestations (except in the bones) the occasional
exhibition of Sulphur is most useful. But besides such defi
nite maladies, we frequently meet with cases presenting
numerous symptoms of ill -health, which rapidly clear up under
the influence of the drug. I suppose that in these patients
there is or has been some tendency to cutaneous eruption.
Many observers, moreover, testify to the striking results of
 SULPHUR . 7:29

giving a dose or two of a high dilution of Sulphur in the

course of such diseases as inflammation of the brain and
lungs. In all these instances the drug seems itself to effect a
certain amount of improvement, while it renders subsequent
medicines more efficacious. Curiously enough, however, it
rarely cures alone. If it be continued , in chronic disease, above
a week or two, the progress made towards cure is generally
arrested , and even becomes retrograde. Hahnemann says
“ Sulphur, when administered in a small dose, seldom fails in
effecting an incipient cure of the chronic non-venereal dis
eases . I know a physician in Saxony who obtained a great
reputation for curing such maladies by adding, without
knowing why, flowers of sulphur to every one of his prescrip
tions. In the beginning they produced a good effect, but
in the beginning, for, in a little while, the good effects
ceased .”
There is one of these diseases now under consideration,
however, in which Sulphur plays a more permanently curative
part. This is rheumatism. Here the medicine has the highest
reputation - alike in the domestic practice which carries it in
the pocket ; in its local application in the old school to mus
cular and tendinous rheumatism and sciatica ; and in the
internal use of homeopathic therapeutics. “ I almost always,"
writes Dr. Russell, “ commence the treatment of chronic
rheumatism by the administration of Sulphur in some form ;
and sometimes I find it useful to persevere with this one
remedy for months. I believe that in this I merely act in
accordance with the general practice of all experienced homeo
pathists .” Dr. Bayes says that he has found it very bene
ficial in chronic lumbago and sciatica in patients of venous
constitution .
II . In passing now to the local actions of Sulphur, I would
note that this “ venosity ” of which Dr. Bayes speaks is a
recognised character of the subjects and maladies in which it
displays most decided influence. Hempel says that it is to
the venous radicles what Aconite is to the arterioles, with
 730 SULPHUR .

equal force dissipating their engorgements. We may with

advantage take this thought with us as we proceed.
1. For many cutaneous diseases Sulphur is the best medicine
we have. It readily cures recent prurigo, when the itching
has the characteristic of that induced by the drug. It clears
the skin of the anomalous eruptions which infest it in unhealthy
children. It is good for acne, where also its local application
in some form is useful : Teste commends it for favus, and
Hempel for crusta serpiginosa. It is almost an unfailing pre
ventive of the recurrence of boils ; and only less so of that of
styes and whitlows. In scabies we of course use Sulphur in
the usual manner to destroy the acarus. But since the erup
tion often spreads far beyond the burrows of the parasite, and
endures after its destruction , we need an internal remedy
homeopathic to it ; and this our provings show that we pos
sess in Sulphur. I would add that dry porrigo capitis and
psoriasis discolor disappeared during the Austrian provings ;
and that Dr. Clotar Müller esteems Sulphur the principal
remedy for old ulceration of the legs.
2. Sulphur is very useful in many affections of the eyes.
It acts most upon the conjunctiva, and is of course best indi.
eated when inflammations of this membrane take place in
unhealthy subjects. Its chief place is accordingly in strumovs
ophthalmia , for which at some time in the treatment it is
indispensable. But it also, says Dr. Dudgeon, possesses in
acute catarrhal ophthalmia an efficacy almost magical; and
has been used with more or less success in inflammation of
nearly every texture of the visual organs. I refer you to his
able series of papers in the sixth and seventh volumes of the
British Journal of Homæopathy, for cases illustrative of its
value.
3. Another chief seat of the influence of Sulphur is the
rectum . It is very good for itching and burning of the anus ;
and for piles, especially when dependent upon abdominal
plethora (with Nux vomica ). I can recommend you nearly
always to begin the treatment of chronic constipation with
 SULPHUR . 731

Sulphur, especially when piles are present. But here, also,

you will generally have to go to some other medicine to com
plete the cure . Often, delighted by the wonderful improve
ment effected in these cases by a week's course of Sulphur, I
have continued its administration ; and as often have seen the
benefit gained steadily disappearing until I changed the
medicine . There are also cases of chronic diarrhea, the
evacuations occurring chiefly if not entirely in the early
morning, and being very urgent, in which Sulphur is cura
tive. Hahnemann, in the Materia Medica Pura, recommends
it in autumnal dysentery with fatiguing tenesmus, worse at
night.
4. Not less specific is the influence of Sulphur on affections
of the respiratory organs. I cannot better exhibit its homeo
pathicity here than by bringing before you the experience
of Dr. Leudet with the sulphurous springs of Eaux - Bonnes .
It is related in a communication made by him to the eleventh
yolume of the Practitioner. He describes the effect of the
medication in a case of chronic bronchitis, characterising it as
" a kind of congestive poussée towards the respiratory organs,
with nervous and circulatory stimulation throughout the whole
of the system . It seems as if the bronchial disease resumes
an acute character under the exciting impression of the sul.
phurous water, and that in order to heal and disappear it
requires this ephemeral revivification ." In another place he
says—“ There is no doubt that the Eaux -Bonnes may bring
on spitting of blood in phthisical subjects, since they are
capable of producing the same result in individuals whose
air -passages are quite unimpaired .” And again— “ The Eaux
Bonnes stimulate the muscular coating of the bronchi, excite
its contractions, and may go so far as to create artificial
asthma.”
To these actions of the drug (which are fully substantiated
by our pathogeneses) its use in homeopathic practice pre
cisely corresponds. At the Leopoldstadt Hospital in Vienna
Sulphur has for many years held a very high place among the
732 SULPHUR .

remedies for pleurisy and pneumonia. In pleurisy it is given

(after Aconite) in the acute plastic form , where it is said
rapidly to disperse the effusion. Nor has it less power,
according to the able physicians who first conducted the
Hospital--Drs . Wurmb and Caspar- , in promoting the reso
lution of pneumonic hepatizations. It is at the end of the
second stage of pneumonia that it is indicated ;—that
“ period,"” as Bähr well says, “ of anxious expectation to the
physician, because he cannot decide whether re-absorption or
a purulent dissolution of the exudation will take place. .
Now is the period for the exhibition of Sulphur, and it is
astonishing with what magical rapidity the organic reaction
is sometimes kindled by this agent.” Dr. Russell considers
Sulphur a most important remedy for asthma; and points
out the frequent alternation of paroxysms of this disease with
fits of gout and attacks of lepra and psoriasis. I know indeed
of no remedy so frequently beneficial in chronic asthma. Dr.
Meyhoffer, in his classical treatise on Diseases of the Respira
tory Organs, gives several illustrations of the value of Sulphur
in chronic bronchitis, especially in gouty, rheumatic , or other
wise unhealthy subjects. Dr. Bayes praises it in phthisis when
the skin is eruptive. As regards this disease I would again
refer you to Dr. Leudet's interesting paper . While showing
that the good effects of the sulphurous waters are primarily
due to their local affinity and substitutive action, he goes on
to say that the forms and varieties of phthisis in which they
are most beneficial are those in which “ the patient is not only
phthisical, but something else besides - rheumatic, gouty, or
herpetic." These old " organic habitudes," he says, "are stirred
up and brought to life by the sulphurous medication. They
had been vanquished by the more destructive and fatal
tubercular diathesis ; but now, revived, they in turn prove
antagonistic to it, and suspend its course.” This is just the
“ antipsoric ” use of Sulphur in other words.
It is worth remembering that of the diseases most fre
quently ascribed to the repercussion of itch by Autenrieth
 SULPHUR . 733

and his fellows asthma and phthisis occupy the highest

place.
5. A neurotic action has only lately come to be ascribed to
Sulphur. Dr. Robert Cooper, one of our most industrious
therapeutic workers, has been labouring at this subject for
some years past. In a pamphlet published in 1869,* he
endeavoured to establish the specific power of the drug over
"an intermittent periodical neuralgia, in which an aggrava
tion takes place every twenty -four hours, generally at 12 or 1
o'clock, either in the middle of the day or at midnight,
gradually increasing up to this point, and then as gradually
diminishing.” In subsequent communications, mainly to the
British Journal of Homoeopathy ,† he shows that he has been
led to extend the use of Sulphur to almost every form of
neuralgia, and with rarely failing benefit. It is in his hands
what we have seen Phosphorus to be in those of Mr. Ashburton
Thompson ; and, like that, has hardly proved so successful
elsewhere. Several cures by it, however, have already been
published by other practitioners ; † and further experience will
doubtless enable us to fix its place in the therapeutics of the
disease, and so to have another useful agent at our command
in its treatment.
Dr. Cooper would extend the neurotic action of Sulphur to
intermittent fever, and considers that we have in it an “ anti
periodic " of the first order. I can hardly think that the evi
dence yet adduced is sufficient to warrant this conclusion ,
But some of the cases he has related § do show that we have
in it aa valuable remedy for the malarial cachexia, as we often
meet with it in those who have returned from tropical
climates ; and as this, too, is a new use of the drug, Dr.
Cooper merits our best thanks for having added to our know
ledge of its virtues and put new means at our disposal for the
aid of our patients.
* Sulphur as a remedyfor Neuralgia and Intermittent Ferer .
+ See vol . xxix , 664 ; xxx, 274.
I As in Monthly Ilom . Review , xvi, 93.
§ Brit, Journ . of Hom ., xxviii, 192 ; xxxiii , 698 .
734 SULPHUR .

6. Lastly, I would speak of the use of Sulphur in the form

of sulphurous acid, as obtained by burning it in the atmo
sphere the patient breathes, or spraying a solution into the
air - passages. This medication has been brought before the
profession by Dr. Dewar, of Kirkcaldy, * and Mr. Pairman, of
Biggar . In affections of the respiratory organs they obtain
the same benefits which we have seen as resulting from the
internal use of the drug ; and find that Sulphur can thus
cause asthma as well as cure it, just as the Eaux - Bonnes do.
But their most important result is to show—what was indeed
partially known previously — that the fumes of Sulphur
constitute one of the most potent disinfectants known ; and
in this capacity operate most beneficially in the management
of all infectious diseases. In those of animals such a mode
of treatment seems to promise great things ; and there is no
reason why, especially in the form of spray, sulphurous acid
should not be helpful in destroying the germs of contagious
maladies in the human subject.
It is curious to find Dr. Dewar and his friend as enthusi.
astic about Sulphur as almost a panacea for all diseases as if
they were complete adherents of the psora -doctrine.
There may yet be forms of disease -- especially old con
gestions, as of the brain and liver - in wbose treatment
Sulphur finds a place ; but I think that from what I have
said you will have gained a fair idea of most of its proper
ties.
As an “ anti-psoric ,” it is a unique drug. Otherwise, it
best compares with Arsenic and with Sepia.
All dilutions seem to act well ; but in rheumatism and
asthma the lowest triturations seem most in favour. Dr.
Cooper's cases were all treated with the tincture.
* On the Application of Sulphurous Acid . 1868.
+ The Great Sulphur Cure brought to the test. 1868 .
 LECTURE XLI.

TABACUM , TARAXACUM , TELLURIUM , TEREBINTHINA, TEUCRIUM ,

THUJA , URANIUM.

We are now beginning to see the end of our journey.

Sulphur has been the last medicine which requires any
lengthened treatment ; and in two or three more lectures I
hope to complete all I have to say about the Materia Medica
Homeopathica.
My first subject to -day will be the “ weed ” dear to
smokers, Nicotiana
Tabacum.
We make a tincture from the leaves of the Virginian
plant.
There is a proving of Tobacco in the third volume of the
Arzneimittellehre of Hartlaub and Trinks, contributed by
Sehreter and Nenning, and seemingly obtained from sub
stantial quantities on the healthy subject.
Most of those who listen to me are, probably, smokers.
I need not therefore remind you of the ordinary effects of
tobacco on unsophisticated frames. They form the group of
symptoms -- pale face, cold and perspiring skin, salivation ,
faintness, sinking at the stomach, small, frequent, and
irregular pulse - which, with the distressing sensation of
sickness itself, constitute the condition called “ nausea ,” as
we have seen it induced by Tartar emetic and Lobelia.
With it — and more from tobacco than from the others-is
general muscular relaxation throughout the body. I have
736 TABACUJ .

already said that physiology has not yet explained the

rationale of this condition, save by referring it to the emetic
centres at the base of the brain ; and that pharmacology
accordingly can only deal with it phenomenally. It is im
portant, however, to know that the ordinary depressant
and relaxant effects of tobacco - whether as smoked by a
novice or as injected in infusion into the rectum - belong to
the state of nausea . For its actual direct effect upon the
heart, muscles, and nervous centres is of aa somewhat different
character, as experiment has ascertained and poisoning by it
occasionally shown. It isin the form of its alkaloid
nicotine-a tetanizer to both voluntary and involuntary
muscles, including the heart, intestines, and uterus ; and it
contracts the pupil. In large poisonous doses it affects the
cerebral functions, causing a semi-apoplectic condition and
( post-mortem ) much congestion of the brain , especially about
the pons Varolii and medulla oblongata.
Beside these effects of tobacco, we have those of its long
continued use in excess. Palpitation and intermittent action
of the heart are among the most common of these ; and in
extreme instances even angina pectoris may be induced, as
observed by M. Beau. * Amaurosis, from white atrophy of
the retina (without preceding neuritis), was for some time
among its more dubious effects : but the observations of
Mr. Hutchinson seem to have established the reality of the
connexion between the two. In a case recorded by Lalle
mand, spermatorrhea with all its attendant evils seems to
have been induced by continued exposure to the emanations
of tobacco. I Then we have observations upon the state of
health of workmen in cigar manufactories, some of which
you will find in a paper by M. Teste translated in the seven
teenth volume of the British Journal of Homeopathy. It
produces in these subjects a peculiar dull grey complexion
* See Phillips, sub voce.
+ See Medical Times and Gazette, Sept. 28, 1867.
I On Spermatorrhæa, p. 233.
 TABACUM . 737

( evidently of hæmatic origin , as it is removable by the pre

parations of iron) , loss of flesh, and dyspnea probably
asthmatic. Last, we get such effects as those described in
the Edinburgh Medical Journal of August, 1864, where long
continued tobacco -cating (! ) caused complete marasmus,
paralysis, and death .
Shall I add to these unquestionable symptoms any de
rivable from what is called the “ moderate ” use of tobacco ?
As I am no smoker myself, I must be careful to preserve im
partiality here. I believe that the use of tobacco stands on
the same footing as that of tea and coffee . They are all
medicinal agents ; all produce violent symptoms of poisoning
when taken in large quantities; and all, when habitually used
in excess, disorder the functions, especially those of the heart
and nervous system. But the experience of all of us goes to
prove that tea and coffee may be taken daily without any
appreciable effect on the health . This is the “ moderate "
use . Its figure can only be ascertained by experience, and
probably differs with different persons. So also with
tobacco . Only I suspect that the quantum allowed them
selves by most smokers is beyond the safety - point of modera
tion. Teste says : - " all smokers of long standing, or almost
all — for I admit exceptions -- have their slight or severe
ailments which would immediately cease were they to leave
off smoking . ” It is easy for any one who suffers, but does
not as yet mistrust his pipe, to try the experiment for him.
self. I think that any one who will read M. Teste's cases
( including his own experience) as related in the paper I
have mentioned will feel inclined to do so . Dr. Dyce
Brown's recent advocacy of moderate smoking * in no way
conflicts with these views . I cannot , however , agree with
him in supposing that to the healthy body tobacco is ever
a " stimulant,” however small the dose . His own experiences
of its action of this kind are entirely taken from morbid
conditions ; and he himself admits that if he smokes when
* Brit. Journ . of Ilom ., xxxiii , 496 .
 738 TARAXACUM .

not fatigued or depressed his usual allowance will make him

" seedy."
I can say little at present about therapeutical uses of
Tabacum . To poison people with it for the sake of obtaining
muscular relaxation is of course no part of our practice ; and
even in the old school has been rendered unnecessary since
chloroform has become known. Its employment in tetanus
may rest upon another foundation. If the drug is given to
cause relaxation through nausea, it is of course used anti
pathically, and is sufficiently perilous. But, as we have seen ,
it is in another mode of its action perfectly homeopathic to
the tetanic condition ; and some of the success claimed for it
here and in strychnia - poisoning may be due to this modus
operandi . It ought to be an occasional remedy for sea
sickness ; my trials of it, however, have hitherto yielded only
negative results. Teste's observations would show its homeo
pathicity to some forms of gastralgia and enteralgia ; and Dr.
Edward Blake commends it in the insomnia of dilated heart.*
As allied medicines we have Antimonium tartaricum , Digitalis,
and Lobelia .
We next come to the dandelion, Leontodon
Taraxacum .
Our tincture is prepared from the expressed juice of the recent
plant.
Hahnemann obtained five provers for Taraxacum , though
he did not experiment with it himself. Their results, making
264 symptoms, appear in the fifth volume of the Reine
Arzneimittellehre.
This pathogenesis presents little that is characteristic. The
coating of the tongue with a white skin, which peels off in
patches, leaving a raw surface ; diuresis ; and profuse per
spiration throughout the night, are the only symptoms which
strike me. A case of over-dosing with the drug, cited by
Hempel from the Lancet, shows its power of causing an
* Monthly Hom . Review , xix, 94.
 TELLURIUM . 739

exanthem like a mixture of lichen and urticaria , with fierce

itching and constitutional irritation .
We have no experience of Taraxacum confirmatory of the
hepatic action ordinarily ascribed to it, but which the experi
ments of Dr. Hughes Bennett, and also those of Dr. Ruther
ford and M. Vignal, render very questionable. Dr. Phillips
thinks its medicinal efficacy is due, not to any action on the
liver, but to a “ tonic ” influence which it exerts on the
stomach and duodenum. This may well be, as Pereira says
that “where the digestive organs are weak, and readily dis
ordered, Taraxacum is very apt to occasion dyspepsia, flatu
leney, pain, and diarrhea.” It ought to be serviceable in such
dyspepsia, when accompanied with patchy tongue. It might
be useful, moreover, in some cases of diuresis, of night-sweats,
and of recent cutaneous disorder.
For dose Hahnemann advises a drop of the pure juice, i.e.
two drops of his mother- tincture.
Another of the rarer metals now comes before us in the
shape of
Tellurium .
The precipitated metal is triturated for our use.
A monograph on Tellurium , containing provings on fourteen
persons mainly instituted with the lower triturations, is con
tributed by Dr. Hering to the fifth volume of the American
Homeopathic Review .
Dr. Hering tells us that he proved Tellurium on the same
day in the morning of which , for the first time in his life, he
saw the metal and took it into his hands. “Everything of
the kind,” he says, “ must, with me, pass as soon as possible
over the mucous membrane of the tongue, mouth, and
pharynx ; and I then listen with a more attentive spiritual
ear than if a symphony of Beethoven were being performed.
I listen eagerly to hear what kind of an answer may be forth
coming from the unknown depths of the human body and
life.” He did not hear much that was significant in his
experiments on his own person ; but two of his fellow - provers
740 TELLURIUM .

--Drs . Metcalf and Carroll Dunham - got very striking results.

Several provers had prickling itching of the skin, with papular
eruption ; but Dr. Metcalf had besides two or three well.
marked patches of herpes circinnatus. Dr. Carroll Dunham
found, after some days, his left ear beginning to itch, burn,
and swell. “ There were aching and throbbing pains in
the external meatus, and, in the curse of three or four days,
a copious watery discharge from the ear, smelling like fish
pickle. The discharge was acrid, and caused a vesicular
eruption on the lower lappet of the ear and on the neck,
wherever it touched the skin . The inflammation of the ear
generally was not vesicular. The colour was a bluish red,
and the ear had the appearance of being infiltrated with
water.” This affection lasted nearly three months ; and left
the prover, it is said, with his hearing permanently affected.
Both Dr. Metcalf and Dr. Dunham report much success
from using the drug in accordance with these indications. I
can myself confirm the experience of the former as to its value
in ringworm of the surface ; and Dr. Houghton, of New York,
who is giving much attention to aural disease, tells us that
Tellurium is as specific for otitis media with thin acrid dis
charge as Pulsatilla when it is thick and bland . *
Another effect of the drug on Dr. Dunham was great super.
ficial tenderness of the spine, from the last cervical to about
the fifth dorsal vertebra, with an irritation radiating therefrom
upwards, outwards, and forwards. This lasted for some two
months ; and should cause the metal to be remembered in
spinal irritation .
As Tellurium was proved mainly in the third and fourth
triturations, would seem that it should not be given lower
in disease. Dr. Metcalf used the third potency in his cases,
Dr. Dunham the thirtieth .

I must next direct your attention to the place occupied in

homoeopathic practice by the oil of turpentine,
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxxiv , 356.
 TEREBINTHINA . 741

Terebinthina.
We make a solution of the oil in rectified spirit.
a

The rubefacient effects of turpentine when applied to the

skin suggest its local action on the stomach and bowels when
swallowed, though it is commonly hurried too quickly through
the alimentary canal to set up inflammation. Given in con
ditions of passive inflammation and ulceration of the digestive
mucous membrane, the same local influence, acting substitu
tively, becomes curative. Hence its repute in typhoid fever,
when the ulceration of the bowels becomes active (as shown
mainly by the dry and glazed tongue), or lingers too long
into the stage of convalescence, provoking recurring diarrhea.
When absorbed into the blood, turpentine acts as a general
stimulant, causing intoxication and a febrile condition, and
setting up inflammatory irritation at the seats of its elimina
tion, which are the urinary and respiratory organs and the
skin . I will speak of these seriatim .
1. By far the most important sphere of the action of Tere
binthina lies in the region of the kidneys and urinary mucous
membrane generally. It is an irritant throughout the tract.
Acting on the kidneys, in very small doses it is diuretic : in
larger quantities, it sets up congestion going on to inflamma
tion of these organs, with hæmaturia, albuminuria , and some
times complete suppression of urine. It inflames also the
bladder and urethra , and often causes strangury. All this is
so well known, that any application of turpentine to urinary
inflammations must be admitted to be homeopathic. So
Pereira says, “ In blennorrhea of the urinary apparatus, it
seems to set up a new kind of irritation in the affected mem
brane, which supersedes the previously existing disease. ” It
is indeed our chief remedy in hyperæmiæ of the urinary
organs. In simple renal congestion, which is almost as
common as the corresponding affection of the liver, it is
well nigh infallible. When this condition goes on to com
48
742 TEREBINTHINA .

plete suppression of urine, Turpentine will often restore

the secretion ; as in a case of Dr. Yeldham's in the first
volume of the Annals (p. 386) . When it manifests itself by
hæmaturia, you will generally find Turpentine the best
styptic. But the relation of the drug to true inflammation
of the kidneys requires more detailed consideration ,
There is a typical case of its pathogenetic effects in the
eleventh chapter of Dr. George Johnson's book on Kidney
Diseases . Besides the evidences of inflammation of the urinary
passages, there was considerable hæmorrhage, which the
presence of blood -casts of the renal tubes proved to have
come from the kidneys themselves. But it should be observed
that albumen was found only when blood was present, and
that no desquamation of renal epithelium could be discovered .
These are, as I have satisfied myself, the usual effects of
Turpentine upon the kidney. They signify, I take it, that its
main influence is expended upon the Malpighian bodies,
causing their congestion, and hence ( as we have seen ) hæma
turia or ischuria. In nephritis, accordingly, it would be
preferable where the congestion predominated over the de
squamation. This obtains, according to Dr. Dickinson , in the
nephritis from cold as distinguished from that from scarlatina.
Our experience with the drug fairly corresponds with these
pathogenetic indications. Dr. Kidd's paper on Bright's
Disease * first brought it prominently forward as a remedy.
The first case in which he gave it was one of albuminuria of
some months' standing, with great anasarca, from cold . The
urine was scanty and smoky, sp . gr. 1018 ; under the micro
>

scope blood -globules only were observed . Complete recovery

took place under four-drop doses of the pure spirit three
times a day. The other case was apparently one of granular
degeneration . But it had begun with hæmaturia from
mechanical violence ; there was much anasarca , with hydro
thorax ; and the urine contained fibrinous casts and blood .
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xiii, 560.
 TEREBINTHINA . 743

discs. Terebinthina q, gtt. j ter die, removed the anasarca

and hydrothorax, and the general health improved ; but the
urine remained albuminous and of sp. gr. 1012 only. Nor
do the cases of post -scarlatinal nephritis adduced by Drs.
Henderson and Yeldham * lead to any different conclusion .
In all the immediate effect of the Turpentine is to make the
urine freer and clearer ;-i.e. it liberates the Malpighian
capillaries from their congestive torpor, so that the aqueous
portion of the urine is freely secreted, and the loaded tubes
flushed of débris and cleared for action . I myself, however,
prefer Arsenicum and Cantharis in this form of the disease.
In other affections of the urinary mucous surface Tere
binthina is homeopathic enough , but is hardly used so fre
quently as its analogues in our practice.
2. That turpentine is exhaled by the breath is evident
to the senses ; and it is allowed by all that where the
bronchial mucous membrane is the seat of chronic catarrh ,
the medicine in passing through it exercises a modifying
influence for the better. But it is not clearly recognised that
this influence is of the same character as that which we have
seen in the urinary sphere — that it is a true instance of
“ substitution," i.e. of homeopathy. Trousseau and Pidoux,
however, make this plain “ The mucous membranes " they
say of those under its influence “ are dry, as if in the first
stage of catarrh : they are injected, turgid, and hot. There
is frequently herpes labialis, heavy sub - sternal pain and
tickling in the trachea, as at the commencement of bronchitis :
the subjects have been seen to bring up phlegm streaked with
blood .”
3. Turpentine, as it is eliminated by the skin, causes red .
ness and even scarlatiniform eruption there. No use, how-.
ever, has yet been made of its cutaneous action.
There are three other properties of Turpentine which
require consideration, and which do not obviously spring from
its physiological action .
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xiv, 1 ; Annals, i, 386.
744 TEUCRIUM MARUM VERUM .

The first is its anti-hæmorrhagic virtue, which is un

questionable. Whether it is homeopathic or no, I cannot
say . We have certainly seen it causing hæmaturia and
· hæmoptysis, and Stillé says that females inhaling the oil
suffer from menorrhagia and dysmenorrhea. To such bleed.
ings, then, it is a simile ; but I cannot yet affirm that this is
its modus operandi when curative of the hæmorrhage of
gastric and intestinal ulceration, or of purpura , as it is said
to be.
Secondly, turpentine is well-nigh specific for tympanites, as
it occurs in typhoid fever and in puerperal disorders. Here the
evidence of homeopathicity is stronger ; for Trousseau and
Pidoux specify meteorism among the effects of swallowing a
drachm of the oil, as observed by them.
These writers also show that the same account is to be
given of another singular property of turpentine, viz. its
power over sciatica. “In certain cases, ” they say, “ it causes
an exquisite sensibility, especially in the lower extremities ,
a general painfulness of the parts, but existing especially
along the track of the great nerves.” I suspect that its value
in rheumatic ophthalmia, as established by Carmichael and
others, rests on the same foundation ; though this has not yet
been demonstrated .
Cantharis and Copaiba are the chief analogues of Tere
binthina, though many others might be named .
The lower dilutions only have been employed. I use from
the third to the first of the decimal scale according as the case
is acute or chronic.

I have now a few words to say about the cat-thyme

Teucrium marum verum .
The tincture is prepared from the whole plant.
The pathogenesis of Teucrium is in Stapf's Additions. The
proving was conducted by four persons, but their manner of
proceeding is not stated .
 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS . 745

There is little that is distinctive in the list of symptoms

produced by Teucrium . It was reputed of old in polypus
narium , used locally in the form of snuff ; and homeopathy,
discerning some specific action on the Schneiderian membrane,
has preserved the practice. But its chief value is as a remedy
for ascarides, against which it operates in the same curious
manner as we have seen Cina do. I prefer it to the latter
where these parasites cause much irritation of the rectum .
It rarely fails, when given in small doses of the mother
tincture or one of the lower dilutions, to neutralise their
effects and promote their expulsion.
I have next to bring before you a medicine of some im
portance which is quite strange to ordinary practice. It is
the product of the evergreen known as “ arbor vitæ ," the
Thuja occidentalis
of Linnæus. Our tincture is prepared from the young shoots .
The pathogenesis of Thuja was published by Hahnemann
in the fifth volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. It contains
334 symptoms of his own, and 300 from ten fellow -observers.
For this drug also we have the advantage of one of the
admirable re- provings of the Austrian Society. It was carried
out upon twenty -six, persons, of whom eighteen were men,
fivewomen , and three children. The doses were pushed even
to as much as 1000 drops of the tincture. The full record of
the proving was published by Dr. Mayerhofer in the fourth
volume of the Austrian Journal, accompanied with a complete
account of its clinical history. This valuable monograph may
be read in English in Metcalf's Homeopathic Provings.
The Austrian provings, which are entirely confirmatory of
Hahnemann's, show that the main action of Thuja is on the
genito -urinary organs, with the anus, and on the skin . It
causes copious and frequent urination ; burning in several
parts of the mucous tract ; pains of various kinds in the
penis ; inflammation of the prepuce and glans;; ulcers,
tubercles, and other excrescences on the sexual organs, with
746 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS .

itching and profuse sweating ; and in the female - leucorrhea .

The sexual appetite was depressed, and the catamenia retarded .
Burning, itching, swelling, and mucous discharge occurred at
theanus ; and on the skin generally, but especially in the ano
genital region, tubercles and warts were developed. In the
neighbouring mucous membranes similar phenomena appeared,
but naturally of moister character.
Hahnemann found Thuja almost unused in practice ; and
the few recommendations of it contained in the older writers
were of the vaguest character.* The symptoms he observed it to
produce in the generative organs led him to recommend it as the
most appropriate - because most homeopathic - remedyfor the
non -syphilitic form of venereal disease , which he called “ syco
sis.” I do not think that his doctrine on this subject is gener.
ally understood : I can certainly say for myself that only lately
:

I have come rightly to apprehend it. In those days gonorrhea

and chancre were generally regarded as products of the same
poison ; and in his treatise On Venereal Diseases, published in
1788, Hahnemann adopted the same opinion . But in later
times he saw reason to modify his views in favour of the now
received doctrine of their essential distinctness, which had
already been maintained by Bell, Autenrieth, and others.
His attention was also drawn to the condylomatous ex
crescences or fig -warts which - perhaps more frequently then
than now — were apt to accompany the contagious blennorrhea
of the urethra . He formed the opinion that these were the
chancre of the non - syphilitic venereal miasm ; and, like that,
constituted the vicarious local manifestation of the internal
evil. If cauterised or otherwise destroyed , they either returned
in the same spot ; or “ similar excrescences broke out in other
parts of the body - whitish, fungous, sensitive, flat elevations
in the cavity of the mouth , on the tongue, palate, and lips, or
large, elevated, brown, dry tubercles in the axillæ , external
neck, scalp, && c.;" or other bodily sufferings came on, which,
* See ch. ii. of Mayerhofer's monograph.
 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS . 747

with the exception of contraction of the flexor tendons,

especially of the fingers, he does not specify.
The pathology of this subject, so far as condylomata are
concerned , still remains obscure. Jahr, who was a devoted
follower of Hahnemann, differs from him about it, holding
the common view that condylomata, with the mucous patches
in the mouth described as connected with it, are products of
syphilis ; while Drs. Skae, Wallace, and Rose Cormack agree
with Hahnemann . The former, * who from his experience at
the Edinburgh Lock Hospital spoke with some authority,
states that the condylomatous form of venereal disease is
known in some parts of Scotland under the distinctive name
of “ sibbens." There seems no doubt that aa true chancre not
uncommonly sprouts into condylomatous vegetations before
disappearing, or becomes transformed in situ into a mucous
patch ; and that both fig -warts themselves and mucous tuber .
cles like them may occur as manifestations of syphilis. But
it is also certain that condylomata are frequently met with in
connexion with gonorrhea, and even without any other vene
real sign whatever. Dr. Skae relates that, when so occurring,
they may be communicated by contagion ; and that secondary
symptoms accompany them in the shape of whitish elevations
on the mucous membrane of the mouth and fauces, a husky
tone of voice, and perhaps some cutaneous eruptions. He
evidently, with Hahnemann, considers that condylomata ,
with or without gonorrhea, are themselves the primary
phenomenon of a specific venereal taint. His successor, Dr.
Gillespie, has observed the same secondary phenomena, though
he thinks the condyloma the result of local irritation and non
contagious. I have taken the above facts from his interesting
communication on the subject in the second volume of the
Edinburgh Medical Journal.
However this may be, the point of interest to us here is
that Thuja is the great remedy for all sycosic manifestations.
When indeed these occur in connexion with syphilis, the
* Northern Journal of Medicine, vol. i, 1844.
 715 TNCJA OCCIDENTALIS .

mercurial preparations,堡* or Nitric acid, which seems to occupy

>

a sort of middle ground between the two diseases, will

generally answer every purpose. But even here, when the
condylomata are acuminated and dry ; and invariably
when they come alone, or in connexion with gonorrhea,
Thuja has proved of striking efficacy. Dr. Mayerhofer bas
shown by numerous citations how large has been its success
both in allopathic and in homeopathic hands, and in all
dilutions. The local use of the drug seems generally helpful
--Hahnemann himself recommending that in old cases the
larger excrescences be touched once a day with the mother.
tincture. This treatment has been forgotten of late years,
and was perhaps never known in this country. But since Dr.
Phillips has recommended it in his treatise - of course as an
original product of “ my own experience " —it is likely to gain
ground in British practice, to the saving of much cauterization
and snipping .
These fig -warts being hypertrophies of the cutaneous
papillæ, Dr. Petroz has argued that other growths of like
nature — as warts and polypi - are also products of the sycosic
virus. While this is doubtful enough, I think he is justified ,
both from theory and from practice, in claiming for Thuja a
like efficacy in their treatment. He gives cases of polypus of
the uterus and larynx which came away spontaneously under
its action ; and both he and Mayerhofer relate numerous
instances of its cure of warts. One of these is especially
interesting, as showing how the drug acts in the same direc
tion as the disease. A woman had four horny and painful
warts on her hands, of three years' standing. After taking
from six to ten drops of the mother - tincture of Thuja daily
for a month , first one and then another crop of new but
(painless warts appeared on the hands. After leaving off the
6
* Dr. Gillespie says that he has “ seen the effects of Mercury on the
lips and tongue very closely resemble the milky patches of condyloma."
+ Mémoire sur la Sycose, in his collected works ( ed. Cretin ).
 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS . 749

drug, these soon disappeared, and the old ones vanished

simultaneously, leaving her hands quite free . I have myself
had most successful results from Thuja in warts. If one or
two only are present, they should be painted with the mother
tincture daily . But when they come in crops, the internal
administration of the drug is the proper treatment. I have
more than once seen large collections of these excrescences, of
long standing, disappear in a few weeks under infinitesimal
doses of the medicine. * I have also obtained the detachment
of an aural polypus from its use,t and the rapid withering of
an elevated and enlarging nævus on the thigh in aa child of five
months old . Nor does it fail us when the morbid growth is of
the serious character known as “ epithelioma.” This is — histo
logically at least - identical with warts and polypi, and feels
similarly the action of Thuja. Dr. Quin has recorded a case
of cauliflower excrescence of the os uteri, in which the medicine
was strikingly beneficial ; $ and it served me equally well to
complete the cure of a bleeding fungus of the breast, after
Phosphorus had brought its activity to a standstill. You
will also consider the celebrated case of Radetzky, in which a
fungous tumour in the orbit seemed to disappear under its
use. || But I must not further multiply instances. Suffice it
to say that, whatever you may be led to think of the sycosic
theory, the presence of excrescences on skin or mucous
membrane may always suggest to you the use of Thuja.
Dr. von Grauvogl would extend the range of sycosis farther
still. He thinks that the leucæmia of Virchow, with its
enlarged spleen and lymphatic glands, is an effect of the
poison ; and that many complex cases of chronic disease caw
* See also a case in Brit . Journ. of Hom ., xxvi, 491 . In this a con
comitant enuresis of long standing disappeared while the medicine was.
being taken .
+ See Monthly Hom . Review, xiii, 536.
I Annals, vol. i.
§ See p. 624 .
| Brit. Journ. of Hom ., vol. i .
750 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS .

be traced back to an initial gonorrhea. Acting upon this

view , he treats them with Thuja and - as its ally - Natrum
sulphuricum ; and reports excellent results, even such forms
of disease as locomotor ataxy and diabetes recovering hereby.
But I have been carried away from my primary subject,
which was to establish Thuja as bearing to gonorrhea and
its condyloma the same relation as Mercury to chancre. I
have shown this as regards condyloma ; but it is no less true
in respect of gonorrhea itself. Dr. Dudgeon shall tell us
what the drug can do in causing the phenomena of the
disease.
“ On the 10th of July last, when taking a walk, I happened
to pass a Thuja tree laden with green cones. I plucked one,
chewed it a little, and thought no more about it. That same
evening I observed a very disagreeable scalding on making
water, which continued all next day, and I was horrified to
observe on undressing that my shirt was spotted all over in a
manner extremely repugnant to one's notions of respectability.
I found a considerable gleety discharge from the urethra,
which was evidently swollen and inflamed , as the stream of
urine was small and split, and the burning had increased. I
had quite forgotten the circumstance of having chewed the
Thuja cone the previous day, and I could not imagine what
could have produced in me, a decent paterfamilias, such a
very incongruous complaint. The following day the discharge
had become yellow, while the other symptoms remained as
before. I now remembered the cone-chewing on the 10th,
and regarded the malady with more composure. I resolved
to take no medicine to interfere with its course . The dis
charge still continued, though in a diminished degree, until
the 15th, but the scalding and interrupted stream of urine
were by that time gone, and on the sixteenth I was again quite
well. "
This is a more decisive picture of acute gonorrhæa than the
provings present, and warrants the use of the medicine eren
in this condition. Hitherto it has rather been reserved for
 THUJA OCCIDENTALIS . 751

lingering and chronic cases, especially when the prostate is

involved. Dr. Böhm writes that an extensive experience has
taught him that the prostate is more or less affected in all
gonorrhæas which have lasted longer than six or eight weeks,
and that this condition of the gland is itself the cause of a
good half of all chronic cases of the disease. In such condi.
tions he has the utmost confidence in Thuja. He says that
he could produce more than twenty cases from his own prac
tice, which, though of long standing, and treated with the most
varied remedies, have yet yielded rapidly and perfectly to
Thuja alone. My own experience is quite in favour of the
specific influence of Thuja on the prostate. I have derived
unequivocal benefit from it in several cases of acute and
chronic inflammation of the gland. It should be useful, also,
for balanitis.
Bönninghausen and others have thought that Thuja has
some specific action in small-pox, even so as to prove prophy
lactic against it, as Belladonna against scarlatina. More evi
dence seems required here. But there is no doubt that the
medicine has proved curative of “ grease " in horses , which
many think of the same nature as vaccinia and variola. I
take this opportunity of saying that Thuja has often been of
eminent service in veterinary practice, as in the treatment of
farcy and of the warty vegetations of the surface so common
in the lower animals.
In the thirteenth volume of the Monthly Homeopathic
Review Dr. Gibbs Blake narrates one case , and refers to four
others, of ranula in which Thuja was curative.
Cannabis, Cantharis, Copaiba, Mercurius, Petroselinum , and
Pulsatilla resemble Thuja in its influence on the genito -urinary
organs. Nitric acid is only ally as an “ anti-sycosic. ”
All dilutions seem to have acted well : perhaps on the whole
the balance is in favour of the higher.
My next medicine is as novel as the last. It is yet another
of the rare metals,
752 URANIUM .

Uranium .
The nitrate is the salt generally used, and is best pre
pared for use by aqueous solution, or (less suitably ) by
trituration .
Dr. Edward Blake has carried out an excellent proving of
Uranium nitricum , three human subjects and nineteen animals
having been the subjects of experiment, and full doses being
taken . His results, first published in the twenty -sixth volume
of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, have been wrought by
him into a monograph upon the drug which constitutes the
second part of the Hahnemann Materia Medica .
Our attention was first called to Uranium as a medicine by
a statement in the British and Foreign Medico -chirurgical
Review for 1851 that “ Lecomte always found sugar in the
urine of dogs slowly poisoned by small doses of nitrate of
uranium ” (vol. xix, p. 44 ). This fact, curious only in the eyes
.

of an ordinary reader, was to a homeopathist pregnant with

suggestiveness. Its import was first pointed out by Dr. F. S.
Bradford, in the eighth volume of the North American Journal
of Homeopathy. He gave no cases ; but stated generally that,
in diabetes, “ two or three grains of the third trituration, ad
ministered morning and night, will, in a short time, reduce
the quantity of urine passed to nearly a normal standard, and ,
after a continued use, the proportion of sugar is materially
lessened.” He also commended it in simple diuresis, especially
when the urine was apt at times to become acrid . In the
tenth volume of the same journal, Dr. E. M. Hale - ever to
the fore when “ new remedies” are concerned - published
three cases of supposed diabetes in which he gave Uranium
nitricum, in one with great amelioration , in the other two
with cure . Unfortunately, the urine was not tested for sugar,
nor was even its specific gravity taken ; so that the cases are
open to question, and Dr. Blake maintains that the two which
were cured resemble Bright's disease rather than glycosuria.
Of this you will form your own opinion. But in the twenty
 URANIUM . 753

fourth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy you will

find three cases of my own of undoubted diabetes mellitus, in
which the beneficial effects of the drug were unquestionable
all dietetic influences being eliminated. From this time
onward numerous communications appeared testifying to the
value of the remedy. Dr. Blake's monograph contains those
from Drs. Lowder, Curie, Jousset, Bähr, Drysdale, and John
Blake which had appeared up to the time of its publication .
I bave myself published two additional cases ;* and Dr. Cor.
nell, of America, another.† Drs. Zwingenberg and Fischer have
spoken of successful results with it ; # and Dr. Magdeburg has
related two severe cases in which the muriate proved most
beneficial. The practice has even been adopted in the old
school ; and in the Lancet of June 13th, 1874, Mr. Carey
He ended his paper
narrates an instance of its success .
with a frank acknowledgment of the source of his prescrip
tion ; but this the Lancet, with characteristic dishonesty,
omitted .
Such evidence appears highly satisfactory, both as to the
positive value of the remedy and as to the homeopathicity of
its action . Dr. Blake's experiments, indeed, seemed to cast a
doubt on the latter point ; as in none of his subjects, human
or brute, sugar eliminated in the urine. But he was
rather hasty in assuming therefrom that “ glycosuria was
quite put out of court, as a condition theoretically calling for
the use of nitrate of uranium .” He might have remembered
that it was in dogs that Lecomte obtained his results ; while
he himself employed in seventeen out of nineteen experiments
cats and rabbits . The non -appearance of sugar in two pup
pies and three human subjects is no warrant that it might not
be found in the next instance of either kind. In the latter
this warning against rash conclusions from negative results
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxi , 369. Blake, Case 21 .
† Ibid ., xxvi, 661 .
I Ibid ., xxxiii, 544 .
§ Ibid ., xxxiv, 67.
 754 URANIUM .

has already received an illustration. Dr. Magdeburg says

“ I have satisfied myself by my own experiments that after
several weeks' ingestion of small doses of Uranium muriati
cum or nitricum by healthy persons sugar can be found in
their urine." * On the other hand, I think that Dr. Blake
may be right in suggesting that the marked action on the
stomach which (as we shall see) he found Uranium to possess
may account for its usefulness in the treatment of diabetes.
My own experience leads me to believe that it is best suited
to cases originating in dyspepsia or assimilative derangement;
while Phosphoric acid excels it where the starting -point of the
disease was in the nervous system .
. The whole question, both as to the physiological and the
therapeutic action of the metal, seems likely soon to be tested
on a wider field . Among the subjects of experimentation for
which grants have been made by the British Medical Associa
tion is “The action of Uranium salts in glycosuria ;” and the
results obtained are announced to be published in the British
Medical Journal for the present year. I look forward to them
with much interest and equal confidence.
The action of Uranium in Dr. Blake's proving was rather
to increase the total quantity and specific gravity of the urine
—the excess being either in urates or chlorides ; and also to
render it more irritating, causing burning and mucous dis
charge. It is thus homeopathic to the diuresis described by
Dr. Bradford ; another instance of which , with incontinence,
is related as cured by it in the twenty -fourth volume of the
British Journal of Homeopathy. But the most important
result obtained was the production of ulceration of the
pyloric end of the stomach and of the duodenum . This was
well-marked in three of the rabbits and one of the cats experi
mented upon ; and in ten more of the remaining fifteen ani.
mals the pylorus was found more or less affected , while in
none was the drug introduced directly into the stomach.
These results show an unquestionably specific action of the
* Dr. Carie, also, states that he has verified Lecomte's experiments.
 URANIUM . 755

drug ; and indicate it in gastric ulcers and in those which

occur in the duodenum after burns. Dr. Drysdale has already
turned the facts to good account by curing a case of ulcer of
the stomach with the drug ;* and I think that his experience
is not likely long to stand alone.
Phosphoric acid is the only medicine which has ( presumably )
the same relation as Uranium to saccharine urine. Kali bichro
micum , and perhaps Arsenicum , correspond to its gastro
duodenal action .
The lowest dilutions only have hitherto been used.
* Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxvii, 307.
 LECTURE XLII.

URTICA, UVA URSI, VALERIAN, VERATRUM ALBUM AND VIRIDE,

VERBASCUM, VIOLA ODORATA AND TRICOLOR , XANTHO
XYLUM , ZINCUM.

My first medicine to -day is the common stinging -nettle,

Urtica urens.
The tincture is prepared from the entire fresh herb.
There is a proving of Urtica, conducted by two persons
with increasing doses of the first decimal dilution, in the
second edition of Dr. Hale's New Remedies.
The most interesting result of this proving was to show
that Urtica, taken internally, can produce on the skin an
affection very similar to that occasioned by its external ap
plication, and which , when occurring idiopathically, is called
nettle-rash (urticaria, hives) . Both provers also had
dysenteric stools, and continuous pain in the right deltoid
muscle. A case of poisoning from an infusion of the plant
is cited by Hempel from Wibmer, where the upper half of
the body felt as if burnt, and became very edematous, serum
flowing out on puncture. There was also suppression of
urine .
Urtica is the favourite homeopathic remedy for burns of
the first degree, i.e., when the injury does not involve the
cutis. It should be used both internally and externally.
Its employment in nettle - rash is obvious : it is reputed by
many the best remedy for this affection, though I myself
have always been satisfied with Apis. It is also useful to
 VALERIANA . 757

relieve the rectal irritation caused by ascarides ; and might

act well in acute dropsy, as from aa chill.
Apis, Rhus, and Cantharis are analogous medicines. I can
say nothing about dose.
And now a few words about the bear -berry, Arbutus
Uva ursi,
of which we prepare a tincture from the leaves.
There is no proving of Uva ursi ; but as there is no doubt
that it specifically affects the urinary mucous membrane, it
has found a place in the Materia Medica Homeopathica. It
is spoken of in old -school therapeutics as a “ stimulant
astringent ; ” and Dr. Phillips states that in large doses “ it
produces inflammatory irritation of the lining membrane of
the bladder and of the urethra, accompanied by tenesmus,
and often by a bloody discharge and, later on, by a purulent
and bloody one." I need hardly say that this is the very
condition in which it is reputed curative : as the same writer
says- “ The principal value of uva ursi is shown in chronic
affections of the bladder, attended by mucous, bloody, or
purulent discharges, with burning in the urethra during
urination ; and especially when these symptoms are produced
>

by calculus. ” Pereira says of its use in this affection : - “ in

some cases, the benefit obtained by the use of it is marked ;
whereas, in other instances, it is of no avail.” It is my own
impression that it acts more on the kidneys than on the
bladder, and is most useful in vesical complaints when these
are symptomatic of renal disease. It has cured renal hæma
turia and pyelitis.
We come now to a well-known medicine,
Valeriana.
The tincture is prepared with dilute alcohol from the root.
A short pathogenesis of Valerian appeared in the Fragmenta
de viribus. Hahnemann did not take it up again ; but Stapf,
Gross, Franz, and Wislicenus proved it, and their symptoms,
49
758 VALERIANA .

with his, appear in the Additions to the Materia Medica of the

first-named . Valerian was also proved by Jörg and his
pupils, twelve in all.
Valerian appears to exert a direct influence on the nervous
centres, of the same kind as, but more enduring than, that of
Ambra, Asafætida, Moschus, and the other nervines. It
especially affects the brain and the organs of sense . It
causes headache, giddiness, and mental excitement, with ( as
Heberden observed ) “ agitation and hurry of spirit ” ; and,
in the visual sphere, sparks and flashes of light, even to the
extent of objects seeming to be on fire. The motor centres
are also agitated, as shown by restlessness and even spasmodic
movements ; and in the sensory sphere there is formication of
the hands and feet, and a sensation about head and spine
which has been compared to the aura epileptica. Franz
suffered a good deal in the eyes ; and Jörg and all his pupils
had turbid urine, the sediment being now bran - like, now of
brick-red sand, now of slime.
It is thus evident that Valerian is perfectly homeopathic
to those conditions of nervous erethism for which it has so
long been in repute. As Hahnemann says— “ It is not to be
wondered at that Valerian in moderate doses cures chronic
diseases with excess of irritability, since in large doses, as I
have ascertained , it can exalt so remarkably the irritability of
the whole system ." * It has not been much used for them in
the homeopathic school ; but in the other camp it seems to
retain its credit. Dr. Ringer commends it especially in that
modification of hysteria which appears at the menopausia
“flushings of the face, hot and cold perspirations, restlessness,
nervousness, depression of spirits, sensation of suffocation at
the throat, throbbing at the temples, fluttering at the heart. "
Dr. Phillips, who states that “ perseverance in its use for too
long a period induces a decided tendency to low melancholy
and hysterical depression," says that “in hypochondriasis, it
calms the nervousness, abates the excitement of the circula
* Lesser Writings, p. 316 .
 VALERIANA . 759

tion, removes wakefulness, promotes sleep, and induces

sensations of quietude and comfort ; sadness is removed, and
the hypochondriac state of the mind in general abates. " He
commends it also in the globus, headaches, flatulence, and
coughs of hysteria. In the only homeopathic record of its
use with which I am acquainted ,* it removed in one case
hysterical dyspnea, coming on paroxysmally, and in another
a choreic condition accompanied with typhoid symptoms. In
both its effects were very marked.
The properties of Valerian seem due to two constituents,
valerianic acid and an etherial oil. The latter, in experiments
on animals, is found to be sedative to reflex excitability ,
which is hardly the physiological action of the whole plant.
Valerianic acid , on the other hand, in combination with inc
or ammonia, seems to produce all the nervine effects of the
drug : it is in this form that Dr. Ringer commends it,
though Dr. Phillips pronounces it untrustworthy. I shall
have more to say about the combination of valerianic acid
with zinc when I come to the latter medicine .
Besides the nervines I have mentioned, Ignatia and
Stramonium compare well with Valerian .
The first decimal dilution answered well in the cases I have
cited .

I have now to speak of the white and green hellebores,

Veratrum album and viride. These, though called ver
nacularly by the same name, are both botanically and
medically very different from the black hellebore, which has
already come before us. They were at first supposed to owe
their activity to veratria. But further investigation has shown
that the substance so described as existing in them is not
identical with the veratria of Sabadilla, though so like it in
physiological action as to be called “ veratroidia ; ” and that
)
other alkaloids are conjoined with it- " viridia ,"9 in the green
variety and “ jervine" in the white - which have properties of
* See Philadelphia Journ. of Hom ., ii, 715.
-760 VERATRUM ALBUM .

their own . I shall therefore speak of either Veratrum as a

separate entity in itself, using the results obtained with the
alkaloids as illustrative only.
We will take first the white hellebore,
Veratrum album .
The tincture is prepared from the root -stock.
The proving of Veratrum (so called ordinarily among us)
is in the third volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre, and is
an enlargement of one which had already appeared in the
Fragmenta de viribus. It contains 315 symptoms from Hahne
mann, 154 from five fellow -observers, and 247 from authors.
The majority of these last are from Greding ; and, being
observed upon melancholico -maniac patients, must not be
received without qualification .
Some instructive cases of poisoning by Veratrum are con
tained in Dr. Hempel's article on the drug. The picture they
present is decidedly choleraic. There is general coldness, with
prostration going on to collapse, embarrassed circulation,
copious watery vomiting and purging, cramps in the extremi
ties, and severe spasmodic colic. The experiments cited by
Christison had already shown that the vomiting and purging
of Veratrum are specific, appearing however the poison may
have been introduced into the system . The more recent
investigations of Schroff have further proved that these
evacuations do not depend upon gastro - enteritis, as Veratrum ,
when introduced directly into the circulation, causes no in
flammation , and even when swallowed produces at most a
transient hyperæmia of the parts with which it comes in con .
tact. “ If its action be more intensified,” he says, “ it causes
a rapid degeneration of the gastric mucous membrane, but no
gastro-enteritis.” The same results have been obtained from
Veratria . Esche took half a grain of the acetate ; and it pro
duced “ collapse, with a pale, cold , wet skin , pinched features, a
rapid, thready, irregular pulse, violent vomiting, and marked
muscular tremblings " (Wood ).
 VERATRUM ALBUM. 761

It is not surprising, therefore, that when Hahnemann had

to prescribe for Asiatic cholera on its first invasion of
Europe, he should have placed Veratrum in the first rank
of its remedies. In every epidemic since it has gained
high commendation, especially in Russia and America. But
Hahnemann perceived * that it met the disease less deeply
than did Cuprum ; and English physicians have observed
the same thing as regards Arsenicum. Dr. Russell's
remarks on this point are so valuable, that I will cite
them here, especially as you may not have access to his
treatise. “ As far as our experience goes, we feel at pre
sent inclined to trust to it more in cases of violent vomiting
and purging, and all the other prominent phenomena of
cholera , but which are destitute of what we should call the
essential physiognomy of the disease. Such cases will pass
for cholera in all reports, Homeopathic and Allopathic, and
they will be cured : but to a practical eye there is something
:

about them different from fatal cases , at the very outset. The
disease seems to be going inwards, advancing towards the seat
of life, not coming outwards from it. That they are often
fatal, there is no doubt ; and that Veratrum cures them, there
is no doubt either :: but still Veratrum is not sufficient in the
:
worst type of the disease : and the reason of its great exalta
tion is, that it cures so many curable cases very like true
cholera . ..... We have found it most useful in cases where
there was violent vomiting and purging, without that sudden
deadly collapse which we have characterised as the indication
for Arsenicum ." It follows from this that it is precisely
suited to choleraic diarrhea. I used to give it in summer
diarrhea, but of late years have abandoned it in favour of
China. As the autumn comes on, however, when vomiting is
superadded to the purging, and when the intestinal evacua
tions are expelled in aa forcible gush, with little or no griping,
* Lesser Writings, p. 842.
t On Epidemic Cholera (p. 226 ).
 762 VERATRUM ALBUM .

I give Veratrum instead of, or in alternation with, China , and

with great advantage.
The colic and cramps of cholera add to the indications for
Veratrum in its treatment, though the latter belong yet more
to the action of Cuprum . The colic of Veratrum , however ,
is very well-marked . It is often associated with hiccough ,
and is apt to cause a sense of suffocation in the chest and
stomach, which, as well as the abdomen, it affects. One of
Hahnemann's earliest homeopathic cures was a case of
recurring colicodynia of severe character and long standing ,
possibly - as the patient was a printer - due to the action of
lead. Veratrum was given because of the similarity of the
symptoms to those it causes ; and, though the dose was so
large as at first to cause a painful
*
aggravation, it effected a
speedy and permanent cure. * Hahnemann also found it .
"
specific in the so - called " water -colic " which haunted some
marshy parts of Brunswick and Lunenburg.t Dr. Bayes com
mends it highly in cases of pain after food and water- brash ,
with cold hands and face ; and it should be useful in spasmodic
hiccough.
The spasms of veratria are found to be due to a direct
action of the drug upon the muscular substance. They are
the primary expression of a toxic influence exerted upon it .
which soon goes on to paralysis. The heart, as being itself a
hollow muscle, shares in this effect; and hence the weakening
and retarding of its beats so marked in Veratrum -poisoning .
This property has been turned to account in the use of the
American species - Veratrum viride - as a cardiac depressant
in fever and inflammation , as we shall see presently. We
rather utilize it by giving Veratrum album as a “ tonic " in
cases of cardiac and general muscular debility. The “ great
weakness and exhaustion with cold sweat on the forehead "
which is Dr. Guernsey's chief indication for it ; the intermitting
heart, and “ debility with blue hands and cold feet ” in wbicha
* See Lesser Writings, p. 353.
+ Ibid ., p. 605.
 VERATRUM ALBUM . 763

Dr. Bayes finds it so useful, belong to this category . So also

in all probability does the paralytic state of the rectum which
it caused in one of Hahnemann's provers, and the constipa
tion depending on this cause which it has often proved able
to benefit.
Veratrum album was the hellebore much used by the
ancients in the treatment of chronic disease, and especially of
insanity. A learned account of the practice is given by
Hahnemann in the treatise De Helleborismo Veterum by which
he gained his licence in Leipsic in 1812. It was used as a
drastic emetic and purgative, and probably effected any good
which came out of the evil by the shock and change it gave
to the system . But Hahnemann thinks that it sometimes
acted specifically ; and cites Aetius as saying— “ it is not the
vomiting whereby the veratrum album is of use in chronic
disease ; for many have taken and digested it with scarcely
any evacuant action, and yet have experienced no less benefit
from its use than those who have been worked by it. " He
says that at least one third of the cases of insanity occurring
in lunatic asylums might be cured by it in such small doses
as the twelfth dilution administered in the patient's drink.
The pathogenesis of the drug hardly supports this strong
statement. The marked symptoms of insanity which stand at
the end of Hahnemann's list are all from Greding — that is,
they were observed upon insane patients taking the drug, and
are worse than worthless. Delirium , however, is sometimes
caused by poisoning or overdosing ; and Hahnemann wrote in
1806–1 know not on what authority- " it produces in its
direct action aa kind of mania, amounting from larger doses to
hopelessness and despair ; small doses make indifferent things
appear repulsive to the imagination , although they are not so
in reality.” In the preface to his proving he says it is useful
in some cases of hypochondriasis.
The coldness which we have seen Veratrum causing is
always a great indication for it in practice. Besides cholera,
we have it sometimes in ague and in typhus; and Hahne
764 VERATRUM VIRIDE.

mann in the former, and Wurmb and Caspar in the latter

instance, have testified to the value of the drug.
Aconite, Antimonium tartaricum , Colchicum , and Digitalis
are the chief analogues of Veratrum album .
The medium dilutions — from the third to the twelfth - have
been those generally used. But in cholera practitioners have
gone both higher and lower : the thirtieth has been in favour
:

with many,, while in the last epidemic in Liverpool Mr. Proctor

got the best effects from the first decimal.
And now of the green or American hellebore,
Veratrum viride.
The tincture is prepared from the root .
A proving of Veratrum viride by Dr. Burt, in substantial
doses, is contained in the second edition of Dr. Hale's New
Remedies ; and the therapeutic portion of his fourth edition
relates numerous cases of over- dosing with it, besides giving
a full account of its clinical uses.
The green hellebore shows its relationship to the white by
occasionally causing a choleraic condition, as in a child of Dr.
Burt's whose case is related by Dr. Hale. But, though vomit
ing is frequent and severe, there is no purging. The symptoms
come on rapidly, and depart as soon . More frequently,, how .
ever, the main action of the drug is expended on the circula
tion. Either the condition of nausea may be induced, with
its usual phenomena, as we have seen them occurring from
Tartar emetic and other drugs ; or there may be - as with the
salt just named and with Digitalis — great slowing of pulse
and respiration, without other symptoms; or there may be
from the first what always shows itself sooner or later, a grea
loss of muscular power in both heart and arteries, causing
syncope and threatening death .
Veratrum viride has thus a three -fold sedative influence
upon the circulation , which it can reduce like Tartar emetic
through the medium of nausea , like Digitalis through the in
 VERATRUM VIRIDE . 765

hibitory influence of the vagi, and also by directly weakening

the force of the heart. It is not surprising that, with such
properties, it should be extensively used in the old school as
an arterial sedative in fevers and inflammations. It is less
natural that homoeopathists should follow the example, seeing
that the action is obviously one of a contrary rather than of a
similar. I cannot recommend you to imitate them ; nor is our
manna so scant for such needs that we should lust after the
flesh - pots of Egypt. The only use of Veratrum viride of this
kind which I can advise is aa local one. There is evidence from
many quarters * that the application of the pure tincture or a
strong lotion will arrest erysipelas, synovitis, and other acute
but superficial inflammations and congestions in a very rapid
manner ; and, if it is so, it would be a pity that we should
not apply it for the purpose.
The real homeopathic use of Veratrum viride grows out of
its action on the nervous centres. Dr. Ringer speaks of it as
causing “ dull, heavy, frontal headache, sometimes accom
panied by shooting or stabbing pain over one or both brows."
Dr. Burt had constant aching pains in the back of the neck
and shoulders, so that it was almost impossible to hold the
head up ; and in his case of poisoning paroxysms of opistho
tonos appeared. Dr. Wood shows that viridia causes con
vulsions, of cerebral origin ; and Dr. Coe speaks of observing
choreiform muscular contortions from the use of the “ concen

trated preparation ,” Veratrin . We are thus led to see the

probability of Veratrum viride acting as a true simile in
erethistic and hyperæmic conditions of the brain and cord ;
and experience has proved it to be so. Dr. Hale esteems it
very highly in such conditions, considering it to act somewhat
like Aconite and Belladonna combined . His book contains
numerous instances showing its value in cerebro -spinal menin
gitis, the acute cerebral irritations of childhood, and puerperal
convulsions. Dr. Shuldham has lately published some cases
* Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxii, 651 ; xxv, 256 ; xxxiv, 281.
766 VERBASCUM THAPSUS .

illustrating the same power of the drug ;* and Dr. Cooper

comes in at the end of a long list of witnesses to testify its
virtues in chorea.f In all these affections it quiets nervous
irritation and disposes to sleep ; and , if fever be present, it dis
perses it in perspiration. Used in this way, Veratrum viride
seems a really valuable addition to our store of remedies.
I have already indicated the medicines most analogous to
our present one. The first decimal dilution has been most
frequently used.
I have now to say a few words about the great mullein , or
“ high taper ”‫܂‬
Verbascum thapsus.
The tincture is prepared from the fresh herb .
There is a proving of Verbascum in the sixth volume of the
Materia Medica Pura , containing 32 symptoms from Habne
mann , and 141 from four others.
I mention this medicine rather because it is one of Hahne
mann's than because of any active virtues it possesses. The
only applications to which its pathogenesis has led have been
to prosopalgia and migraine on the one hand, and to
hoarse dry night- coughs (like those of Sambucus) on the
other. It once indeed, in Dr. Clotar Müller's hands, cured
radically a migraine of twenty years' standing. He was led
to its choice by a “peculiar sympathetic affection of the ear
on the side affected. At the height of the headache, which
mainly consisted in pressure and pinching in the temple and
zygoma, there commenced an intolerable drawing in the ear,
with a sensation as if something stopped it up. "
The mother-tincture (as recommended by Hahnemann
himself ) has been used.
* Monthly Hom . Review , xiii, 597 ; xiv, 37.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiv, 272.
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxi, 19. See also case of prosopalgia in vol.
xi , p. 299.
 VIOLA ODORATA . 767

We come next to two species of Viola. First we have the

sweet violet itself,

Viola odorata .
The tincture is prepared from the entire fresh plant.
There is a short pathogenesis of Viola odorata in the
eighth volume of the Archiv, but without explanation as to its
origin.
Our fullest information as to the clinical uses of the violet .
is given by Teste. He finds it particularly suitable in cases .
of spasmodic cough and dyspnea occurring in lymphatico
nervous constitutions: the symptoms are more troublesome
in the day time. In one of his cases the cough and dyspnea
were due to the retrocession of measles ; and the eruption was
restored by the medicine. In a note, Teste says : — “ Petroz
informs me that he has used Viola with success in various
rheumatic affections of the upper limbs.” Later, in the
Gazette Homeopathique de Paris, Dr. Tessier published several
cases of rheumatism affecting the carpal and metacarpal
joints, in which striking results followed the administration of
Viola odorata . Dr. Kitchen translated these for the first
volume of the Philadelphia Journal of Homæopathy, adding
some confirmatory cases of his own . * A curious point about
them all is that the rheumatism was always on the right side
of the body. In two cases where both wrists were affected ,
the right one soon got well, but the left remained in statu
quo .
Teste thinks Viola is an analogue of Chelidonium .
The twelfth dilution in Tessier's hands and the first in Dr.
Kitchen's seem to have acted equally well.
The other species of Viola is the pansy or heartsease,
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 314.
766 VERBASCUM THAPSUS .

illustrating the same power of the drug ;* and Dr. Cooper

comes in at the end of a long list of witnesses to testify its
virtues in chorea.t In all these affections it quiets nervous
irritation and disposes to sleep ; and, if fever be present, it dis
perses it in perspiration. Used in this way, Veratrum viride
seems a really valuable addition to our store of remedies.
I have already indicated the medicines most analogous to
our present one. The first decimal dilution has been most
frequently used.
I have now to say a few words about the great mullein , or
“ high taper "
Verbascum thapsus.
The tincture is prepared from the fresh herb.
There is a proving of Verbascum in the sixth volume of the
Materia Medica Pura, containing 32 symptoms from Habne
mann , and 141 from four others.
I mention this medicine rather because it is one of Hahne
mann's than because of any active virtues it possesses. The
only applications to which its pathogenesis has led have been
to prosopalgia and migraine on the one hand, and to
hoarse dry night- coughs (like those of Sambucus) on the
other. It once indeed, in Dr. Clotar Müller's hands, cured
radically a migraine of twenty years' standing. He was led
to its choice by a “peculiar sympathetic affection of the ear
on the side affected . At the height of the headache, which
mainly consisted in pressure and pinching in the temple and
zygoma, there commenced an intolerable drawing in the ear,
with a sensation as if something stopped it up."
The mother -tincture (as recommended by Hahnemann
himself) has been used.
* Monthly Hom . Review , xiii, 597 ; xiv, 37.
† Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiv, 272.
| Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxi, 19. See also case of prosopalgia in vol.
xi, p. 299.
 VIOLA ODORATA , 767

We come next to two species of Viola. First we have the

sweet violet itself,

Viola odorata .
The tincture is prepared from the entire fresh plant.
There is a short pathogenesis of Viola odorata in the
eighth volume of the Archiv, but without explanation as to its
origin.
Our fullest information as to the clinical uses of the violet
is given by Teste . He finds it particularly suitable in cases
of spasmodic cough and dyspnoa occurring in lymphatico
nervous constitutions : the symptoms are more troublesome
:

in the day time. In one of his cases the cough and dyspnea.
were due to the retrocession of measles ; and the eruption was
restored by the medicine. In a note, Teste says : - “ Petroz.
informs me that he has used Viola with success in various
rheumatic affections of the upper limbs.” Later, in the
Gazette Homeopathique de Paris, Dr. Tessier published several
cases of rheumatism affecting the carpal and metacarpal
joints, in which striking results followed the administration of
Viola odorata .Dr. Kitchen translated these for the first
volume of the Philadelphia Journal of Homæopathy, adding
some confirmatory cases of his own . * A curious point about
them all is that the rheumatism was always on the right side
of the body. In two cases where both wrists were affected ,
the right one soon got well, but the left remained in statu
quo .
Teste thinks Viola is an analogue of Chelidonium .
The twelfth dilution in Tessier's hands and the first in Dr.
Kitchen's seem to have acted equally well.
The other species of Viola is the pansy or heartsease,
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., xxiv, 314.

$
768 XANTHOXYLUM FRAXINEUM ,

Viola tricolor.
Here also the entire plant is used for making the tincture.
The same volume of the Archiv contains a similar patho
genesis of this species of Viola also ; and here again Teste is
our therapeutic informant. His facts, however, are not of his
own observing, but come from the older authors. They show
that the pansy enjoyed at one time a high reputation in crusta
lactea and other forms of impetigo .* One case he mentions
is especially interesting, where it cured nervous paroxysms in
a young girl which seemed to have been caused by the sup
pression of milk crust. For myself, I have rarely needed any
other medicine for this plague of children ; and I have more
than once given it in recent impetigo in adults with very
satisfactory results. I have seen it act well even in the sixth
dilution, which proved curative in a case recorded by Dr.
Dudgeon : t but as a rule I give the first and second
decimal .

I have next another American medicine to introduce to you,

the prickly ash,
Xanthoxylum fraxineum .
The tincture is prepared from the bark and berries, in
equal proportions.
A good proving, on three men and three women, with
clinical remarks, may be found in the second edition of Dr.
Hale's New Remedies.
These provings, conducted with substantial doses, are not
a little notable, and ought to prove fruitful. The only
symptoms which have as yet led to practical results are those
* On this Hahnemann remarks : - “ The pansy violet at first increases
cutaneous eruptious, and thus shows its power to produce skin diseases, and
consequently to cure the same effectually and permanently ” ( Lesser
Writings, p. 328 ).
† Brit. Journ . of Hom., xi, 355.
 ZINCUM. 769

of the female generative organs. It caused in one woman

the appearance of the menses a week before their usual time,
and attended with much pain :: in another, there seemed
66
an unnatural forcing of nature, " the menses came on
profusely, “with dreadful distress and pain , baffling descrip
tion.” It has accordingly been used to relieve dysmenorrhæa ,
and with success . Like all drugs which help dysmenorrhea,
it is applicable to after- pains : I have occasionally given it
for these with good effect. Dr. Hale says that it is specially
suitable to women of spare habit, nervous temperament, and
delicate organization ; and where the pain is neuralgic in
character. Dr. Massy thinks the prolongation of such pain
along the crural nerve an indication for it. My own choice
of it is determined by the concomitance of dysmenorrhea
with menorrhagia, which is rare .
The dilutions from the first to the third decimal have been
used.

And now I come to the last medicine on my list, which is

a metal of some therapeutical importance,
Zincum .
We use indifferently the metal itself, its oxide, or its
sulphate -- making triturations of each.
Hahnemann published a pathogenesis of metallic Zinc in
the first edition of the Chronic Diseases, containing 743.
symptoms, which from the preface we may gather to have
been observed upon patients taking the 18th dilution. In
the second edition the list has swollen to 1375. Some of the
additional symptoms (i.e. those of Franz, Hartmann, Hau
bold, Rückert, v. Gersdorff, and Stapf) are taken from a prov .
ing recorded in the sixth volume of the Archiv : the remainder
are from “ Ng.” in Hartlaub and Trinks' Arzneimittellehre, and
from four others. Some experiments with the oxide, from
Wibmer's Toxicology and from the Hygea , are related by
Hempel. A full study of Zinc - containing all recorded
 770 ZINCUM .

homeopathic cures by it - has been recently contributed by

Dr. Gerstel to the Internationale Homöopathische Presse
(vols. iii — v).
It is very much the fashion to say that, save the emetic
effects of the sulphate and the irritant properties of the
chloride, the preparations of Zinc have no pathogenetic
action on the system . But the high repute it has gained at
various times in disorders of the nervous system - and especi
ally in the form of the oxide - should have led to aa doubt of
such a negation . Nil prodest quod non læditur idem . The
experiments of Wibmer show that the oxide has a marked
effect on the nervous centres, causing vertigo, sleeplessness,
formication , and oscillatory movements of the muscles of the
extremities. Bouchut found it produce sleeplessness and
restlessness by night; and on the other hand Orfila noted
stupor and inactivity in the dogs he poisoned by it. These
last represent the ultimate effect of the drug in man . Wibmer
says—“ The action of small doses, if their use is continued
beyond a certain period, may produce a general cachexia,
with complete prostration of the nutritive functions : the
intellectual faculties are likewise impaired , the beats of the
heart are slow and feeble, and the power of locomotion and
strength of body are enfeebled to a high degree.” A good
illustration is afforded by a case mentioned by Pereira, in
which a gentleman , " for the cure of epilepsy , took daily, on
>

an average, twenty grains of the oxide, till he had consumed

3246 grains, which must have taken him about five months.
At the end of this time he was found of a pale, earthy hue,
wasted away , and almost idiotical ; his tongue was thickly
coated, the bowels were constipated, the inferior extremities
cold and cedematous, the abdomen tumid , the superior ex
tremities cold and shrivelled , and their skin dry like parch
ment : the pulse was about 60, thready, and scarcely per
ceptible ."
Dr. Headlam Greenhow has described an affection of
those who are exposed to the fumes of deflagrating Zine, as
 ZINCUM . 771

< brass -founders' ague.” It is characterised by shivering,

short hot stage, and profuse sweating : during the chill there
is malaise, nausea, and constriction of the chest.* This
closely corresponds with what Wibmer describes as the
primary effect of the internal use of the oxide. "If small
doses,” he writes, “ are continued for some time, the prover
first experiences an uneasiness and pressure in the stomach ,
together with eructations and constipation, frequently also
vertigo, headache, dulness and tightness of the head,
spasmodically contracted pulse, palpitation of the heart, cold
hands and feet, pains in the diaphragm , between the shoulder
blades, and down the spine as far as the sacrum , sleeplessness,
languor, formication and drawing of the limbs. These
symptoms generally abate after vomiting or a discharge from
the bowels, and still more frequently after the bursting out of
a general perspiration."
Dr. von Tunzelmann has communicated an instance in
which water which had acted on the zinc of galvanized iron
pipes proved prejudicial to three persons who drank of it.t
The first suffered from paralysis of the sixth nerve, with
diplopia and strabismus ; and had dark and turbid urine,
with pain in the loins. Another had the latter symptoms;
and the urine, on being examined , was found loaded with
urate of ammonia and containing a small quantity of sugar.
In the third subject there was severe rachialgia with photo
phobia, insomnia, and total anorexia. The value of these
observations is somewhat impaired by the fact that all the
patients had not long before been the victims of lead-poison
ing, which in each had affected the same parts that afterwards
became troubled by the zinc. Dr. Boardman has shown that
the minute quantity of the metal ordinarily present under
such circumstances is hardly capable of causing bad effects in
healthy persons. I
* Med . Times and Gazette, 1862, i, 227.
+ Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxii, 610.
I See London Medical Record, vol. ii .
772 ZINCUM.

The uses of Zinc in all schools of medicine correspond

with these pathogenetic effects. The erethistic condition it
first sets up in the brain, medulla oblongata, and spinal cord
finds its representative in the cerebral excitement without
hyperæmia in which the followers of Rademacher so highly
esteem the acetate ; in the infantile convulsions for which
Trinks and Madden commend the sulphate; and in the epilepsy
and chorea in which it has traditional repute. Dr. Bayes has
found our minute doses to act very well in several cases of
the latter complaint. But the homeopathic use of the drug
has been mainly as a remedy for states of cerebral depression.
It has proved curative in chronic headaches * and in melan
cholia where this condition was present. Dr. Kidd thinks he
has seen benefit from it in chronic atrophy of the brain, and
in the progressive paralysis of the insane . † And the late Dr.
Elb of Dresden found it most useful in that threatened
paralysis of the brain which sometimes occurs in scarlatina,
whether before, during, or after the eruptive period . Dr.
Marcet's recommendation of it ( following Huss) in chronic
alcoholism is of the same nature. The febrile attacks
induced by the metal, moreover, have been unconsciously
applied in the same way ; for Pereira reckons the sulphate
an anti - periodic, and he and Ringer concur in ascribing to
the oxide a power of checking the sweats of phthisis.
We are yet within the sphere of the nervous system when
we speak of the virtues of another preparation of Zinc --the
phosphide — in neuralgia. It is supposed by Mr. Ashburton
Thompson that it is solely in virtue of its phosphorus that this
compound acts. But he himself allows that it often proves
emetic, which is a property of Zinc rather than Phosphorus.
He also related in the eleventh volume of the Practitioner two
cases in which the Zinc phosphide, given for non -neuralgie
complaints in doses of the seventy -second of a grain , after
* See Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xii , 489.
+ Annals, iii, 427.
I Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vii, 40 .
 ZINCUM . 773

being taken a few times caused “ severe frontal headache

accompanied by frequent stabs of pain apparently darting
from before backwards to the occipital region, but intra
cranial, and not attended by any disturbance of sensation in
the scalp .” These pains were removed by Phosphorus, which
makes it very unlikely that it was that element of the Zinc
phosphide which caused them ; and shows us that Zinc, in
this form at least, is capable of causing neuralgic sufferings
as Mr. Thompson has shown it to be of curing them . In his
book - of which I spoke when upon Phosphorus—he omits
this illustration of the pathogenetic power of Zinc phosphide,
while reiterating his confidence in it as curative. The same
thing may be said of the power of the valerianate of Zinc in
neuralgia, which Dr. Hale finds very effective in doses of from
the tenth to the hundredth of aa grain.* In the same direction
points Dr. George Clifton's recent communication to the
British Homeopathic Society + of the good he has got from the
sulphate in migraine. The vomiting here is an important
element in the homeopathicity of drug to disease ; and it is
known that sulphate of Zinc excites it when introduced other
wise than by the stomach, i.e. by a direct impression on the
nervous centre of the process, as in the malady itself.
There is some reason to think that the favour which Zinc
has gained as a local application to the eyes arises from a
specific action on this part, for Drs. Allen and Carroll Dunham
have each recorded a case of pterygium crassum cured by it,
and Dr. Leadam recommends it for granular lids remaining
after ophthalmia neonatorum — the drug in all these cases
being given internally.
The case I have cited from Pereira indicates Zinc as a suit
able remedy for “ tabes sicca ," that primary atrophy without
hectic which we sometimes see in adults. Teste, moreover,
recommends it for cardialgia occurring in delicate and nervous
* See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., XXV, 163.
+ Ibid., xxxiv, 108 .
50
774 ZINCUM .

females, and for disorders of the nerves, motor and sensory,

which supply the heart and air - passages ; also of those which
surround the joints and penetrate the bones .
Cuprum and Plumbum are somewhat analogous medicines.
The lower triturations have generally been used.
 LECTURE XLIII.

SUPPLEMENTARY .

It is now upwards of a twelvemonth since I began to dis

course to you from this place upon the Materia Medica of
Homeopathy. Several new medicines have come to the front
during the interval, and fresh information has accumulated as
to others. There are some medicines, moreover, which I have
-purposely or by accident - omitted from the alphabetical
series, which yet deserve mention . I shall accordingly occupy
you for this one more lecture with a brief account of some
nine or ten drugs, indicating the sources of our knowledge
regarding them , and the direction in which they have been
found to manifest activity.
Angustura . — By this name I intend the Angustura vera , or
cusparia, the bark of the galipea officinalis. The " vera ” is
necessitated because of the occasional substitution of an
Angustura spuria, which is pretty certainly identified with
the bark of the strychnos nux vomica or some allied species
having the same physiological action. Hahnemann , saying
that the true Angustura likewise possesses great medicinal
powers, cites in illustration the symptoms of a case of
poisoning by it, which are evidently those of the spurious
kind !
The true Angustura was proved by himself and eight asso
ciates : the 299 symptoms obtained are recorded in the sixth
volume of the Reine Arzneimittellehre. Dr. Allen adds some
from two other sources, but of equally unexplained origin.
776 SUPPLEMENTARY .

There is little that is distinctive about any of them, nor has

Angustura any recognized therapeutical place. It is used in
its native marshes as a substitute for Cinchona in the treat
ment of remittent and intermittent fevers. Homeopathy has
nothing to add to this, save one case of prosopalgia cured by
it (in the first dilution ) recorded by Dr. Marcy in the New
Materia Medica. Indications for it in spinal affections — as
those of Noack and Trinks -- are untrustworthy, being based
upon the effects of the spurious bark . Angustura vera has
no spinal action .

Apocynum cannabinum . - This plant is often called the

9
“ Indian hemp," but it must not be confounded with the
Cannabis Indica of Hindostan. It is a Canadian herb , from
whose root we make a tincture with proof spirit.
Dr. Allen's Encyclopædia gives pathogenetic symptoms
obtained from Apocynum by four provers ; and Dr. Hale's
New Remedies relates all that is known regarding its clinical
use .

And (almost) all that is known is just this, that Apocynum

has virtues of a remarkable kind in the treatment of all
varieties of dropsy. Anasarca, hydrocephalus, hydrothoras,
and especially ascites, of all kinds and from all causes, occur
repeatedly among the cases cured by it which Dr. Hale has
collected in his second edition . I am unable at present to
distinguish the precise form of action of Apocynum in this
sphere ; and still less to suggest its rationale. It seems always
to require to be given in substantial doses, yet it is no
diuretic, that is, in healthy persons; and, when proved by Drs.
Peters and Marcy, it actually diminished the urinary secretion
in both . I have not found it of any service in the hydro
cephalus of tubercular meningitis or the ascites of hepatic
cirrhosis - conditions for which we sadly want medicinal help ;
but I have seen simple hydrocephalus supervening upon
typhoid clear away very satisfactorily under its use.
impossible to read Dr. Hale's cases without feeling assured
 SUPPLEMENTARY . 777

that Apocynum has a true place as a specific remedy for some

forms of dropsy. He himself thinks it permanently curative
in renal dropsy only ; and supposes that it temporarily
relieves other forms of the disease by its action on the
kidneys.
Apocynum has also cured menorrhagia, to which it seems
homeopathic, and " stuffy ” colds in the head. I have found
it of occasional service in dyspepsia where there is much
bloating after meals, and a frequent sensation of sinking at
the stomach - these two symptoms being very marked in the
provings of Drs. Peters and Marcy respectively.
Apis and Helleborus seem the most analogous medicines.
As regards dose , —the mother-tincture, from one to five drops
at a time, has sometimes proved effectual; but more frequently
it has been found necessary to use the preparation known as
“ Hunt's decoction , ” or to prepare an infusion from the fresh
root (an ounce to a quart of water ).
Aranea diadema . — The use of the spider's web in medicine is
of very old date. Sir Thomas Watson cites many facts showing
its undoubted efficacy in ague ; and Dr. Ozanam has suggested
that it cures by means of the albuminous substance which it
contains, and which Dr. Bence Jones has discovered to be
analogous to and isomeric with quinine.* Dr. Samuel Jones
has lately collected in the American Observer + a number of
facts relative to the action, physiological and therapeutical, of
cobweb, which well deserve consideration .
The spider itself was first employed in medicine in the
form of the species I have mentioned above — a tincture, or
triturations, being made of the entire animal. Dr. Allen gives
symptoms obtained from it by two provers, and some more
( from two other provers) produced by the Aranea sciencia.
The first - named has been a good deal used in homeopathie
practice for intermittents. Dr. v. Grauvogl considers pre
* Bull. de la Soc. Méd. Hom . de France, xvii, 454 .
+ Jan. 1876. See Brit. Jour. of Hom ., xxxiv, 367.
 778 SUPPLEMENTARY .

dominant chilliness the indication for it here, and in some

other maladies also : it suits what he calls the “hydrogenoid"
constitution, i. e. persons all whose ailments are much aggra .
vated by damp.
But the success of the introduction of the venom of serpents
and bees ( in the form of Lachesis and Apis) drew attention
to the poison with which certain spiders are armed ; and some
study has been directed towards the Cuban spider, Mygale
lasiodora, and especially towards the Tarantula . You have
all heard of the dancing mania supposed to be set up in
Italians by the bite of the latter. The facts are under some
cloud of doubt at present; but their fame led Dr. Nunez, of
Madrid, to prove the spider, which he did upon fifteen persons
in the dilutions from the third to the twelfth . In the current
number of the British Journal of Homeopathy (April, 1876)
you may read an undoubted case of inoculation of the venom
of the Tarantula. The symptoms caused resembled those of
serpent-bite ; and the only approach to the Italian tarantism
is that the subject of the poisoning experienced great restless
ness, so that he could not keep quiet anywhere or in any
position ; he felt that he must keep in motion, though walking
aggravated all the symptoms.
Tarantula has been a good deal used in nervous affections,
especially in chorea, for which Dr. Gibbs Blake has also given
Mygale with advantage.* Dr. Jousset says that he can com
mend Tarantula in this malady, and also in convulsive hysteria
and tenesmus of the bladder.t
Another spider which has been proved and used is the
Theridion curassavicum . A pathogenesis of it is contained in
Dr. Hering's Materia Medica : it is said to be useful in
scrofula .
Dr. Ozanam has published some Etudes sur le vénin des
Arachnides (Paris, 1856) , which contribute much information
on this subject.
* Monthly Hom . Review , xiv, 342.
+ Bull. de la Soc. Méd . Hom . de France, xvi, 593.
 SUPPLEMENTARY . 779

Calendula , the common marigold, owes its place in the

Materia Medica of Homeopathy to its power as a vulnerary.
Dr. Allen gives a pathogenesis of it obtained by two provers ,
but the symptoms are few and insignificant, and it is rarely
if ever given internally. But one of our German practitioners,
Dr. Thorer, becoming acquainted with the healing virtues
ascribed to the marigold by the common people, endeavoured
to ascertain by experiment its exact place in the treatment of
injuries. You will find his paper translated in the fifth
volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. His cases show
that Calendula has a most beneficial influence over wounds,
especially incised wounds, promoting favourable cicatrization
with the least possible amount of suppuration . From that
time to this Calendula has always been used in homeopathic
practice to promote the healing process in wounds, ulcers,
burns, and other breaches of surface. You may read in
structive comments on its virtues by. Dr. Yeldham in several
papers in the British Journal and the Annals. It was used
on a large scale by our American colleagues in the treatment
of the injuries occurring in the course of their civil war ; and
it obtained their warmest commendations. No suppuration
seems able to live in its presence .
Of course there is nothing homeopathic in Calendula ; its
working, that is, is no instance (so far as we know) of the
operation of the law of similars. Nevertheless, it is homæo
pathists only — at least in England and America — who give
their patients the benefit of this precious vulnerary. You
will find it invaluable in surgical practice.
Chloral hydrate.-- Into the use of this drug as a hypnotic
I do not propose to enter. You can learn it from the ordinary
text -books ; and you must use your judgment as to its adop
tion. Chloral is unquestionably the least harmful agent of
the kind we can employ, when we must employ them.
But our concern with the drug is to know whether we can
utilise any of its physiological action homeopathically. Its
780 SUPPLEMENTARY .

influence on the system appears to be that of a pure nervous

depressant. It acts very much as Opium does, only that it
affects the cerebrum so quickly, that the so -called primary
excitement of the latter, which we have seen to depend upon
vaso -motor paralysis, is slightly and rarely visible . Every
now and then, however, it does occur ; and the flushing of the
surface is characterised by being accompanied with more or less
eruption, most frequently urticarious or erythematous, but
sometimes like that of measles or scarlatina, and always as
sociated with great itching. The conjunctivæ , also, are not
merely suffused, but hot, stiff, swelled, and tender (especially
on the lids) , and there is sometimes lachrymation. Dr. Allen
gives a number of such symptoms in his pathogenesis of
Chloral.
Dr. Dyce Brown also has, in the fifteenth volume of the
Monthly Homeopathic Review , related in detail many observa
tions displaying its physiological effects ; and, in the thirty.
second volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, has
shown us how to turn them to good account by giving a series
of cases of conjunctivitis, urticaria, and pruritus in which, in
grain doses or less, it proved very efficacious in his hands.
In the former place he also calls attention to its disturbing
and depressing influence upon the heart, showing this to be
exerted through the nervous supply of the organ, and to
indicate the drug when from nervous causes its action is dis
ordered. The same thing may be said of its effects on the
respiration .

Cundurango. - This is a South American shrub, the bark of

which has lately been introduced as a remedy for cancer. You
will find its history in various places in the volumes of the
British Journal of Homeopathy from the thirtieth to the
thirty -fourth . Dr. Clotar Müller was the first of the homeo
pathic school to test it. He found it powerless in scirrhous
indurations ; but over malignant ulcerations, to all appearance
carcinomatous, it exerted in his hands an undoubted curative
 SUPPLEMENTARY . 781

influence. The same experience is reported by Dr. Obolinski,

of Cracow . Professor Friedreich, of Berlin, next followed with
a case which his experienced diagnosis declared to be un
questionable cancer of the stomach , and which Cundurango
cured in three months.* Dr. Fischer, from our ranks, com
municates another instance of oure of what seemed the same
disease. Lastly, Professor Nussbaum has been able to say :t
- “ We have seen good results in cancer from Cundurango.
Friedreich reports several perfect cures ; and I have seen good
effects, though'no cure, from its internal use. I applied locally
only compresses moistened with a solution of sugar of lead,
and still the internal use of Cundurango produced extra
ordinary and lasting amelioration ."
In the view of these encouraging results, we disciples of
Hahnemann naturally inquire what is the pathogenetic
action of the substance. Information on this head has been
supplied us by Dr. Burnett from this country, and Dr. Dike
man from America . The former made a full proving of the
infusion. It congested his Schneiderian membrane, the effect
extending into the frontal sinus ; caused pimples, pustules, and
blotches on the skin ; and especially affected the lips, making
them red, and giving rise to painful cracks in the corners of
the mouth. This last trouble it caused also in two patients
who were taking it for other affections ; and Dr. Burnett
reports several cures by the drug of the same condition when
occurring idiopathically, both in the mouth and at the anus.
Mr. Proctor suggested to him the similarity between its effects
and that of syphilis ; and it seems that it was an accidental
cure of constitutional syphilis by the herb which first led to
its use in Ecuador, and that it is as an anti- syphilitic that it
there enjoys most repute. Dr. Dikeman took severalfive-drop
doses of the mother tincture, and found it act as a diuretic,
* See North Amer. Journ. of Hom ., May, 1874.
+ See ibid ., August, 1875.
1 Brit. Journ. of Hom ., xxxiii , 400 .
& New England Medical Gazette, x, 486 .
782 SUPPLEMENTARY .

causing also much cardialgia, and itching with brownish tint

of the skin .

Jaborandi. — This is another South American plant. Reports

of its great activity as a diaphoretic and sialogogue, when given
in the form of an infusion made from the leaves, came in 1874
from Paris, where it had been introduced by Dr. Coutinho, of
Pernambuco. It has since received much experimentation in
England, chiefly from Dr. Ringer. His article on it in the
Lancet of Jan. 30th, 1875, gives a full account of our know
ledge regarding it. Its diaphoretic and sialogogue properties
are very great, very constant (at least in adults ), and seem
ingly primary. The skin is indeed very flushed at first ; but
it grows pale subsequently, and yet the sweat continues.
Other secretions — lachrymal, nasal, bronchial, intestinal - are
occasionally increased by it. It acts upon the eye like Calabar
bean, contracting the pupil, and causing tension of the accom
modative apparatus, with approximation of the nearest and
furthest points of distinct vision . Both in this, and in its
general influence (which is accompanied with vascular relaxa
tion throughout the body), it is precisely antagonistic to
Atropia .
We have not yet utilised these facts homeopathically, but
shall doubtless find the drug available in some forms of sweat
ing and ptyalism . It has lately been proved in America, but
the results have not reached us.

Viscum album . - This plant — the familiar mistletoe - appears

likely to find a place in therapeutics. Some cases of Dr.
Huber's showing its virtue in several affections, especially
rheumatism , sciatica, and metrorrhagia, were translated in the
twenty-second volume of the British Journal of Homæopathy.
Then Dr. Laville communicated some facts about it in re .
lation to epilepsy, for which it has an old reputation . * He
obtained two products from it ; an alkaloid which he calls
* See an account of his book in Brit. Journ . of Hom ., IIV, 673.
 SUPPLEMENTARY . 783

viscine, and a resin. Two grains of the latter placed on the

tongue of aa large rabbit caused a violent fit of epilepsy, which
lasted more than half an hour. He finds it of great value in
the treatment of this disease in the lower animals, especially
in herbivora. Finally, in the twelfth volume of the Monthly
Homeopathic Review, we have communications from Drs.
Wilde and Belcher, showing the mistletoe to have a high and
deserved repute among the common people in this country for
the cure of chorea. It deserves further proving and testing.
Vinca minor. This is the lesser periwinkle — the plant so
named, I mean ; not the mollusc . We use a tincture prepared
from the fresh juice. There is a short pathogenesis in Jahr's
Manual, referred to the seventeenth volume of the Archiv ;
but I cannot find anything about the medicine there. It is
said to be useful in such cutaneous affections as crusta lactea;
and even to have cured the plica Polonica. In my own hands
it has four times availed to check passive uterine hæmorrhage
occurring in women long past their climacteric. In three of
these cases, indeed, the flow afterwards returned, and proved
to have been the initial symptom of carcinoma ; but the effect
of the medicine was not less real for the time. I have used
the first decimal dilution .

And now my remarks must end. There are several other

medicines which might be mentioned, which some day will
probably demand attention.. The monobromide of camphor is
assuming some importance in the old school, and its proper
ties are being ascertained : the same may be said of the curious
substance known as croton -chloral. Dr. Hale's fourth edition
mentions several remedies which may yet be noteworthy.
Such are Guaco, having a reputation against snake- bites and
in cholera, and considered by Dr. Elb (who proved it) a
valuable spinal medicine ; the Hecla lava which, from an
observation of Dr. Wilkinson's as to the exostoses common in
animals who browse near the mountain , has been successfully
given for similar affections in the human subject ; the gneiss
784 SUPPLEMENTARY .

which, under the name of lapis albus, has been introduced by

Dr. von Grauvogl as a remedy for cancer ; the carbazotic or
picric acid which has lately been proved in New York, and
seems to cause anæmia and softening of the brain and cord ;
plantago major, proved by Dr. Humphrey, and found curative
in toothache and enuresis ; and viburnum opulus, highly
praised by the author in spasmodic dysmenorrhea. Two
other potent neurotics of the vegetable kingdom — the
cenanthe crocata and the solanum nigrum — have been recently
brought before us : * the former ought to prove one of our
anti -epileptics. Dr. Allen's great Encyclopædia , moreover, is
continually revealing new medicinal treasures as it progresses:
and if I have the honour of delivering another course of
Materia Medica lectures in this place, I shall draw upon it
more largely than I have hitherto done. For the present,
however, I have no more to say.
One remark only I will make in conclusion. It is now often
admitted that there are some uses of medicines which seem
consonant with the “homeopathic hypothesis," and that
some of the remedies which have been arrived at by its
employment are really useful agents. But it is always
assumed that such instances constitute a small minority of
the curative applications of drugs, and in no way warrant the
adoption of the principle as a general method of treatment.
Well ; we have now considered together every important
constituent of the Materia Medica. I have sought to bring
before you as fully as possible the ascertained facts of the
physiological and therapeutical action of each, and impartially
to discuss the connection of the two. You will bear me out,
I think, when I say that the result has been that nineteen
twentieths of the direct curative actions of drugs manifestly
appear to be homeopathic in respect of modus operandi, and
either have been or might have been arrived at by the appli.
cation of the rule, “let likes be treated by likes.” I venture
See Brit. Journ . of Hom ., vols. xxxii and xxxii.
 SUPPLEMENTARY. 1785

to affirm that no other result can come of a fair survey of

the facts of the case, conducted with this object in view .
This is our position, and here we take our stand. Our
opponents must meet us on the field of Materia Medica if
they wish to convince us ; and I think you will agree with
me that they must retire, either vanquished or convinced
themselves .
I have now merely to thank you for your attention, and to
bid you farewell.
 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE MEDICINES
TREATED OF IN THIS MANUAL.

N.B.—The different sizes indicate the relative importance of the

medicines ; and may afford useful hints as to order of study.
PAGE PAGE
Acidum benzoicum . 22 Arum .
147
Acidum carbolicum 24 Asafætida 148
Acidum fluoricum 26 Asarum . 150
Acidum hydrocyanicum . 28 Asclepias . 151
.

Acidum muriaticum 35 Asterias rubens . 152

ACIDUM NITRICUM 39 Atropia 187
明 。

Acidum oxalicum . • 42 Aurum . 153

ACIDUM PHOSPHORICUM . . 46
Acidum sulphuricum 50 Baptisia . 157
ACONITUM . 52 Baryta acetica . 166
Actæa racemosa 66 Baryta carbonica . 165
Æsculus hippocastanum 71 Baryta muriatica .
. 167
Æthusa cynapium 73 BELLADONNA . 168
Agaricus muscarius . 75 Berberis . 189
Agnus castus . 79 Bismuthum . 190
Ailanthus 80 Borax . 192
Allium cepa 82 Bovista . . 194
Allium sativum 83 Bromium . 195
Aloes 84 BRYONIA . 206
Alumen 86
Alumina . 87 Cactus . . . 218
Ambra grisea 88 Calcarea acetica 224
Ammonium carbonicum . 89 CALCAREA CARBONICA
Ammonium muriaticum . . 90 Calcarea caustica 229
Amyl nitritum . 92 Calcarea iodata )

Anacardium 94 Calcarea phosphorica .

99

Angustura vera 775 Calcarea chlorinata . . 230

Antimonium crudum . 96 Calendula . 779
.

ANTIMONIUM TARTARICUM . 98 Camphora . 230

APIS MELLIFICA • 109 Cannabis Indica . 239
A pocynum cannabinum 776 Cannabis sativa 236
Aranea diadema 777 Cantharis . 242
Argentum . 115 Capsicum 247
Argentum nitricum 116 Carbon sulphidum 249
ARNICA . 122 Carbo animalis 250
ARSENICUM 128 Carbo vegetabilis 251

1
788 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF MEDICINES .

PAGE PAGE

Caulophyllum . 253 Hamamelis 389

Causticum 255 Helleborus niger 394
Cedron 259 Helonias dioica 397
CHAMOMILLA . • 260 HEPAR SULPHURIS . 400
Chelidonium majus . 263 Hydrastis • 406
Chimaphila . 266 Hydrocotyle 411
Chloral . 779 Hyoscyamus 412
Cicuta virosa . 267 Hypericum perforatum 417
Cina 268
CINCHONA 274 IGNATIA . . 418
Cistus Canadensis 295 Indigo . 422
Clematis . 296 IODIUM 424
Coca 298 IPECACUANHA . 448
Cocculus Indicus 299 Iris versicolor . 456
Coccus cacti 303
Coffea . 304 Jaborandi 782
Colchicum . 307
Collinsonia . 312 KALI BICHROMICUM . 458
Colocynth . 314 Kali bromidum 198
Conium .. 317 Kali cyanidum 33
Copaiba . 323 Kali carbonicum . 466
Corallium rubrum . 325 Kali chloricum .

Crocus . 326 KALI IODIDUM

Crotalus. 483 Kali nitricum .
472
Croton . 327 Kali permanganicum 474
Cundurango 780 Kalmia . . 475
CUPRUM . 330 Kreasotum 476
Curare . . 336
Cyclamen , 337 LACHESIS . 483
Lactuca 479
DIGITALIS . 338
.
Laurocerasus 34
Digitaline . 350 Ledum palustre 498
Dioscorea 351 Leptandra 500
Drosera . 352 Lilium tigrinum . 301
Dulcamara 354 Lithium . . 502
Lobelia . 503
Elaterium 357 LYCOPODIUM . . 506
Eupatorium perfoliatum . . 359 Lycopus Virginicus .. 512

Eupatorium purpureum . • 360

Euphorbium .
. 361 Magnesia carbonica . 514
.

Euphrasia • 362 Magnesia muriatica • 09

Manganum . 515
FERRUM . . 364 Menyanthes 516
MERCURIUS 518
Gambogia . 371 Mezereum 553
Gelseminum . 372 Millefolium 555
Glonoin . . 376 Moschus . 556
Graphites . 381 Murex purpurea . 557
Gratiola . 384 Muscaria . 78
Guaiacum • 386 Mygale . 778
 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF MEDICINES . 789
PAGE PAGE

Naja 483 Santonine . 271

Natrum carbonicum . 558 Sarracenia . 683
Natrum muriaticum 559 Sarsaparilla 19

Natrum sulphuricum 562 Scilla 685

Nuphar lutea . 564 Secale 686
Nux moschata Selenium 691
NUX VOMICA : 567 Senecio . 692
Senega .693
Oleander . 581 SEPIA . 694
.

Oleum jecorisaselli. . 446 SILICA . 700

OPIUM . 583 Spigelia • 706
Origanum . 597 Spongia . 709
Osmium . . 598 Stannum .
. 713
Staphisagria . 716
Pæonia 599 Stramonium . 719
Paris quadrifolia Strychnia 580
Petroleum 600 SULPHUR 722
Petroselinum . 601
Phellandrium . . 602 Tabacum 733
PHOSPHORUS . 603 Tarantula 778
Physostigma 627 Taraxacum . 738
Phytolacca 631 Tellurium . 739
Platina 636 Terebinthina . 741
.

Plumbum 638 Teucrium . 744

Podophyllum . 647 Theridion .
778
PULSATILLA . 651 Thuja 745

QUINIA . . . 290 Uranium 752

Urtica 756
Ranunculus bulbosus • 661 Uva ursi . 757
Ranunculus sceleratus Valeriana
Ratanhia . 663 VERATRUM ALBUM . 760
Rheum . Veratrum viride . 764
Rhododendron 664 Verbascum . . 766
. 665 Vinca minor . 783
Rumex
Ruta
crispus 674
. 675
Viola odorata .
767
768
Viola tricolor .
Viscum album 782
Sabadilla 678
Sabina 679 Xanthoxylum , 768
Sambucus . 681
Sanguinaria 682 Zincum . . 769

PRINTED BY J. E. ADLARD , BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE .

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