**DRUGS have been used as the usual method of cure for disease since antiquity, and their derivations varied from single herbs and substances to fearsome combinations from all imaginable sources. The preparation and administration of medicines was kept as a mystery for centuries, and the medicine man was held as superior and revered as a little more than mortal for his powers. Various doctrines of healing sprang up through the years; perhaps the most interesting of these was the doctrine of signatures, founded on the belief that each member of the vegetable kingdom carried within itself the likeness of some organ or part of the human economy, as a sign that this particular plant was applicable to disturbances of that organ. That was probably the most consistent method among all the very ancient systems of applying drugs.
As medical knowledge progressed, occasional writers caught glimpses of better methods of drug application, but such light was rare and medical practice soon lapsed once more into the gloom of superstition. Paracelsus gained considerable insight into the action of drugs, and Halle, the Swedish physician, was a forerunner of Hahnemann in his deliberate experiments to discover the nature of certain remedies. These attempts were not co- ordinated, and made little impression upon the medical world. It was not until Hahnemann demanded to know the action of the drugs upon the human organism that the work was taken up in an orderly way; this demand, however, was not forthcoming until after he discovered the law of cure. The discovery of the law made it mandatory to know the action of drugs, and Hahnemann set to work to obtain that knowledge and called the work drug proving.
What is a drug? And what do we do to prove a drug?
In order to answer the question, what is a drug? we must go back and ask, What is life? Continued action of those forces, through and upon the organs of the body, which preserve it from decay, this is life; and health is that balanced action of these forces which preserves the integrity of all the parts. In this balance lies the conservation of the whole; without this balance more or less destruction of the parts is the result, and the value of this balance is determined by the importance and number of organs or functions involved.
A drug is any material agent, in however attenuated form, the ingestion of which is capable of so disturbing this balance of the vital forces that the functioning of one or more organs of the body is no longer carried out to the best of the whole; and any material substance capable of so acting on the living organism is a drug. Hence drugs are essentially destructive; therein lies the difference between drugs and foods-drugs are destructive while foods are constructive. Both drugs and foods act upon the vital force which rules in all animate beings.
To ascertain the knowledge of a drug is to discover what disturbance of this balance it is capable of producing and what organs are affected; how and what functional changes are made manifest. When we have discovered all this about a drug we can say we have a proving.
In order to be sure of the integrity of our work, we must demand three essential things:
(1) The quality of the drug must be pure; it must be free from all mixture with other drugs, and it must possess all its active properties.
(2) The prover must possess the proper balance in functions and be in a normal, healthy state, so that we can estimate and weigh the amount of the disturbance caused when we deliberately upset the balance of health.
(3) The circumstances surrounding the prover must be those of his normal surroundings, so that the drug can express its action under conditions and circumstances normal to the prover, that any deviation from normal in the prover’s condition cannot be attributed to different circumstances and conditions of his life, but directly to the action of the drug.
These three points must be maintained most carefully.
The ordinary habits of life must be observed, and his ordinary work maintained: otherwise changes from his routine might cause some deviation form his normal balance which would be attributed to the drug action.
All people do not make equally good provers. Some types are more susceptible to certain drug groups than are other types, and those who manifest susceptibility to the action of a drug to the point of developing symptoms must be secured for a satisfactory proving. Those who are peculiarly susceptible to a drug make the best provers, for it is the peculiarly susceptible who develop in the proving the peculiar, rare and characteristic symptoms of the drug; yet those who are less susceptible cannot be rejected as provers provided they develop symptoms even in a small degree, as these serve to verify the symptoms produced in the extremely susceptible, and thus establish them as true symptoms and not chance observations. Not all provers will develop or give the identical symptomatology, some recording a complete symptom while others will record but a partial symptom.
In a consideration of food and the susceptible prover, in some instances an individual will manifest an idiosyncrasy to a certain food or group of foods. To this susceptible, the food becomes a drug, and the individual having this idiosyncrasy is merely manifesting his susceptibility to the possible drug properties in this food substance; he will be the best possible prover of this drug.
The prover must be intelligent enough properly to appreciate and record the subjective symptoms as deviations from his normal conditions of life, as these subjective symptoms are of the utmost value. There is a vast difference in people in their ability both to perceive and to describe their subjective symptoms, therefore we must have a prover who has the gift of perception. We find the lack of perception in many patients who cannot describe their symptoms; such a people who do not make good provers.
Honesty is a prerequisite of a good prover, for he must be very careful to record all phenomena as fact. Remember, a proving is a record of facts-facts that can be produced repeatedly in others; therefore facts must be carefully recorded from the very beginning of the experiment; yet we must avoid equally scepticism, imaginary phenomena or the over-colouring of the real facts. Remember always to treat a fact as a fact and do not try to add to or subtract from its importance; it is not for the prover to sift the symptoms produced. Treat the facts as they are; unless one can do this, he will not make a valuable prover.
At the beginning of this work, the prover must be in that state of mental, moral and physical equilibrium that is characteristic of a normal, healthy being. One who is subject to rapidly changing equilibrium on any one or all of these planes will not make a good prover.
Bear in mind the main and only object in conducting a proving: to discover the positive characteristics of the action of the drug on the vital energy of the human being; to obtain a full knowledge of its action so that its powers can be readily distinguished from any other drug, *for the lawful application of the remedy in states of disturbed vital energy which we call disease.
In making the record, all symptoms must be recorded, but we must not forget that many of these symptoms are held in common with many other drugs; while these symptoms possess a certain value in the final analysis, we must determine those symptoms of the greatest value, especially those which are the most peculiar and characteristic of the drug- the rare, unusual symptoms that distinguish it from all others, because these are the symptoms which will be the curative symptoms, in that they will be the guiding symptoms in selecting the remedy. The symptoms such as are held in common by many drugs are not of great value in the curative sphere. Every symptom must be recorded without bias or favour, otherwise we shall lose unwittingly some of the characteristic symptoms; after all are recorded we can then compare all these symptoms with other drug provings.
So in making a proving two things are to be accomplished: a detailed record of the order of appearance of all symptoms, and an analysis of the symptoms. In making the analysis the three major points of all symptoms should be borne in mind: Location; sensation; and the modifying character.of the symptoms, or modalities, together with the concomitant or apparently unrelated symptoms. The analysis is not complete until we have a comparison of the symptoms with those produced by other drug provings.
Having a clear view of the real objective of proving, and having complied with all the requirements to produce such a proving, how do we proceed?
First, let us consider the dose. It may be we shall use the crude drug, or a low potency, or a high potency, depending upon the nature of the drug. How do we determine which to use? There are certain considerations which are sufficiently stable for guiding rules. From an apparently inert substance, such as *Lycopodium, *Carbo veg. or *Graphites, we can obtain a good proving only from a high potency; therefore we may take as an axiom : ***ANY DRUG WHICH IN ITS NATURAL STATE AFFECTS THE VITAL ENERGY BUT LITTLE WILL DEVELOP A PROVING ONLY IN A HIGH POTENCY. Other drugs having a very strong action upon the human economy in their natural state, such as *Lobelia, *Ipecac., *Cicuta or *Tabacum, may be used in a crude form : ***ANY DRUG WHICH IN ITS NATURAL STATE DISTURBS THE VITAL ENERGY TO FUNCTIONAL MANIFESTATIONS ONLY MAY BE PROVEN IN A CRUDE FORM. Still other drugs, such as the *Mercurius group, which are actively poisonous in the crude form, can be proven only in the high potencies : ***ANY DRUG WHICH IN ITS NATURAL STATE DISTURBS THE VITAL ENERGY TO DESTRUCTIVE MANIFESTATIONS SHOULD BE PROVEN ONLY IN A POTENTIATED FORM.
