On this side of our board we find a diagram which I use, but which is not original as Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft the 1st taught me how to use it. It is as you see, a wheel. And between the spokes are the different sections of the usual schema, i.e., m, for mind, e, for eye; st, for stool; sk, for skin; etc., etc.
Have each of your provers secure a piece of wrapping paper 4×4 or 4×6 feet, according to the size of his table, and after drawing the diagram transpose from his last notebook the symptoms in their proper section. Have the time after beginning to take the drug stated after each symptom, and give them in the order of their appearance.
You will find on comparing notebooks No.I with No.II that when proving certain remedies the number of symptoms in No.I are four and five times larger than those in NO.II. This was clearly demonstrated in our proving of Chionanthus. In this drug the symptoms appeared in the following order: Mind, head, stools, liver, urine, eyes, and skin.
The disappearance of the symptoms was in the reverse order of their appearance, except the stools. For some time after all the other symptoms had cleared up the stools remained hard and light colored in stead of yellow, thin and watery. The above is what I call the liver group of the remedy.
If you turn to Anshutzs New, Old and Forgotten Remedies, page 100, you will find John W.Lawshes proving. Arranged according to my suggestion, you will find between the spokes the following: After taking the 12x and 6x one day each without effect, I took of the tincture at 9.30 A.M. Continued taking each hour during the day, increasing the dose one drop till five were reached, but without any effect whatever.
The next day began with thirty drops at 9 A.M. and increased the dose five drops each hour till I reached one drachm and took three doses of one drachm each. I retired at 10.00 oclock feeling perfectly well.
Awake at 4.30 A.M. next day, severe frontal headache over the left eye. 2-a. Then in Section 3-c, eyeballs exceedingly painful, feel sore and bruised 3-a. In section 6 abdomen; cutting. twisting pains all through abdomen 6-a.
By the above process one can readily see the order in which the symptoms developed on the provers – what which the symptoms developed on the provers – what Professor Woodward, of Chicago, used to call sequence of symptoms in the order of their appearance, one can more speedily and accurately compare the symptoms of the prover and patient, after having taken the case.
The order of the appearance of the symptoms of Chionanthus differed but slightly in the provings I conducted and took part in from those given by Dr. Lawshe. The fact that there were more provers and more potencies used may easily account for the slight difference.
My experience teaches that the sequence of symptoms (Woodward) is much more easily secured when you use the crude drug or lower potencies than when you use the medium or higher potencies. To illustrate and substantiate this statement, I will refer you to our proving of Strychnia phos. The members of the junior class were the provers and were requested to act as such provers. The juniors took different potencies, and different doses at different intervals, as did Dr. Lawshe. The seniors took a single dose, five grains of the 1x.
While the order of the appearance of symptoms varied somewhat, yet it was practically the same in all of the five provers. The proving may be found in the Journal of the A.I.H., 1909, page 297. As I recall that proving, the mental group contained one peculiar symptom, viz., giggling, silly – the tendency to laugh at any everything, and yet there were no women provers. Twitching, jerking and inco-ordination of muscles with the modality – worse from motion – very marked.
I well remember one prover. He was sitting across the desk from me in the faculty room, saying that the muscles of his jaw jerked and ached and, to be more exact as to the location, he raised his hand to put it to the jaw. But instead, the hand went up over his head. This was about seven hours after he had taken the S. p. He said he felt weak and that his heart was pounding hard. He was ordered to go into the next room and lie down and, as he attempted to do so, I was obliged to support him as his legs were weak and jerking – unsteady.
After he had been lying down fifteen minutes, his pulse was 140, hard and firm, the temp. was 100.3.
The next day the muscles were relaxed and provers were weak and lifeless.
Another incident of that proving impressed me greatly. One of the provers, a married man, came to me about two hours after taking the first dose of the drug, and said: Prof., there is Phosphorus in that drug – I know, because of its effects on my sexual organs. Phosphorus low will always cause an erection.
While the action of Strychnia phos. on the sexual organs was so slight that I did not mention it in my summary of the drug, Dr. G. A. Huntoon, a careful observer, stated at one of the meetings of Des Moines Homoeopathic Medical Society that he had found it of great value for men who thought they were impotent. Dr. Huntoon stated that he did not know whether it was due to suggestion or not, but it had proved effective in many cases. I have corroborated his experience in two cases and would now give the symptom rank two.
To demonstrate that any remedy may have more than one group of symptoms let me use a few more illustrative cases. A boy friend of mine also left the farm and studied medicine. We both prepared for college at the same school. He went to Yale for this pre-medic. I went to Amherst for mine. He graduated from the Yale
Medical College; I from the New York Homoeopathic Medical College. We both practiced in Rockville, Conn. He came to me with a patient, his wife, who presented the liver group of Lycopodium. He called it Flatulent dyspepsia and constipation. The prescription was Lycopodium 30th, a grain powder in a pint of water an hour before breakfast, for five consecutive mornings
. The prescription produced the desired object and the doctor and husband were pleased. Some time later he came with another case of flatulent dyspepsia and constipation, just like the first, but the remedy had not phased the case. Two or three questions proved that the make-up of the two patients was entirely different, and in addition the first had no desire for stool, while the second had a constant urging but with no results. Nux 1m, in a dram of distilled water, one dose on first awakening in the morning, cured. Some time later the same doctor came again with the urinary group of Lycopodium.
The patient was a prominent business man whose work the doctor was very anxious to secure. Lycopodium 30th, administered as in Case I, was suggested. The doctor exclaimed, What! the same remedy in the same way for two different conditions? When I assured him that not only Lycopodium, but many other remedies, had not only two, but twenty or more different groups, the poor lazy fellow shook his hand and said : Life is too short to master such a system of therapeutics.
