118. No two drugs produce effects exactly alike.
119. Each plant and each mineral has distinctive physical and chemical properties, odor, taste, color, appearance or chemical reaction that identifies each. With all these properties the chemist must become familiar.
Likewise the physician, in the practice of his art, must be able to identify each plant or mineral by its pathogenesis, verified by deliberately testing each separately on healthy human beings. This quality of a drug cannot be inferred any more than can the chemical nature of an element and can no more be subjected to physical or chemical analysis, than can the soul of man
120. Each remedy must be separately proved and tested.
121. Strong drugs should be given in small doses, mild drugs in larger.
122. Drugs to be proven must not be mixed with other medicinal substance.
123. The drug should be of unquestioned purity and full strength.
124. Drugs must be taken pure and alone not alternated or mixed.
125. Diet during proving should be plain, simple and free from spices or vegetables having any medicinal properties.
126. During proving the prover should avoid distracting affairs that absorb the attention.
127. Male and female should jointly participate in provings.
128. The drug finely divided by potentization, trituration or succussion yields a greater wealth of symptoms than if taken crude or undivided.
129. Prover should begin with small doses and increase dose as proving progresses, as susceptibility can not be predicted.
130. A strong initial dose will more exactly exhibit the primary and the order order of the appearance of its symptoms, but repeated experiments are necessary to acquire all this information.
131. Too frequent repetition of the dose, to the prover, often confuses the symptoms, however, for some drugs several doses will be necessary before symptoms appear.
132. However the order of the appearance of symptoms for mild drugs will be observed only after giving repeated small doses to a sensitive person.
133. When symptoms begin to appear it is useful to observe effect of position, heat, cold, air, rest, motion, contact, eating, drinking, coughing, talking, sneezing, time of aggravation or amelioration of the pains, sensations or symptoms.
These are the modalities of the drugs.
134. No one prover will experience the whole possible pathogenesis of any one drug during one trial. 135. Many provers of both sexes should participate in the proving of each drug in order to make a totality of pathogenesis available in one experiment.
136. A drug so proven will be a remedy for sickness having symptoms most similar to its pathogenesis. The presence of such symptoms in sickness proves the susceptibility of the patient to the drug similar. This remedy is called the similimum. An aggravation must be expected if such remedy is administered in too large a dose or too frequently repeated. This explains the small dose of the homoeopath and assigns sufficient reason for
it.
137. Provers should be intelligent, truthful, observing, in sympathy with the work, and feel that they are serving humanity. Care should be taken, too, that the dose is small enough to avoid violent reaction.
138. Every alteration from normal should be observed and noted in plain simple terms with absolute regard for the truth. If any of the symptoms have ever been felt before they should be recorded for symptoms cannot come of themselves.
139. Provers must make record of sensations while sensations are felt. Record must be made from day to day, through the whole course of the provings.
140. If prover cannot keep record, some one skilled in observing, should keep a daily record, recounted by the prover. No guess, supposition or extorted statement should be allowed to enter into the record.
141. The healthy unprejudiced physician of fine perception, makes the best prover. Every homoeopathic physician should take an active part in proving some drugs as a part of the preparation for the practice of his art.
142. Symptoms of sickness not observed in the pathogenesis of drug, will at times be observed to be removed by the drug when employed as a remedy. Such symptoms can be added to the pathogenesis of that drug, if noted by a reliable observer. It has been facetiously remarked that such symptoms come into the materia medica by breech.
143. A list of drugs so proven constitute a true materia medica. These records are a true voice of nature and ordain each particular drug a specific means of curing a distinctive natural sickness.
A materia medica so stated dramatizes human sickness. The various drugs are the dramatis personae. Each drug when properly interpreted will be personified and stand out as the exponent of a particular and similar human malady and as its specific remedy.
144. Such a materia medica should be in the pure language of nature, every assumption or supposition being eliminated.
145. A large number of drugs should be proven, that there may be a suitable homoeopathic remedy for every natural sickness to which human flesh is heir. By these remedies health may be restored speedily, gently, permanently, safely, surely. The deleterious allopathic method can be avoided, since that method but complicates sickness, dooms the individual to certain chronic sickness, and makes impossible the elimination of the end products of sickness from the experience of the race.
146 to 159. The art of healing or the application of the proven drug to the taken case.
146. The third duty of the physician is to make practical his knowledge of drugs and sickness for the purpose of healing.
147. The drug most suitable for curing a specific case of sickness is that drug having the most similar pathogenesis.
148. Here is stated the theoretic technique of a cure with the proper remedy and proper dose properly repeated. Stated concisely as brevity requires; the indicated remedy excites an artificial disease, a distinct similarity to the disease to be treated, by virtue of the remedy’s similitude of pathogenesis and greater certainty of action, which liberates the organism from the natural malady. The artificial disease soon terminates and leaves the organism free. It is fair to permit this explanation to be questioned, since an explanation to be questioned, since an explanation is not necessary to the action of the remedy.
149. Natural acute diseases are quickly cured. Old complicated diseases are quickly cured. Old complicated disordered with drug symptoms require a greater length of time to cure or they are incurable or difficulty curable. It has been observed that those patients who have taken large quantities of drug mixtures, compounded of antidotal drugs, develop conditions that refuse to respond to any therapeutic procedure.
150. Indispositions require only change in diet or habits of living.
151. Some cases have only a few severe symptoms which obscure collateral symptoms of less severity. These latter must be discovered to complete the picture of the totality.
152. Acute sickness with conspicuous symptoms is easily prescribed for.
153. Select the prominent, uncommon and peculiar symptoms for purpose of prescribing. The symptoms common to all the cases of a certain type, are to be observed for purpose of making a diagnosis but cannot be used for purpose of making a prescription. A diagnosis may suggest a certain group of remedies but not the indicated remedy. The symptoms that identify the case as belonging to a certain type of sickness such as measles or rheumatism will not furnish a basis for a prescription.
154. One dose will usually cancel speedily, gently permanently a recent acute sickness if it covers the prominent uncommon and characteristic symptoms.
155. And without additional discomfort.
156. A homoeopathic prescription may arouse some symptoms not included in the totality of the sickness. But the rule is uninterrupted convalescence.
157. Aggravation is possible from overdosage but not detrimental to ultimate recovery if remedy is discontinued.
158. The aggravation is acute cases indicates correct prescription and a speedy cure. Don’t repeat the dose.
159. The smaller the dose the shorter the aggravation.
160. to end. What to expect from the remedy administered.
160. The remedy apparently cannot be too much subdivided to be efficient.
161. Aggravations, in acute sickness, if any, will be noted in the first hours after the administration of the remedy; in chronic cases in the course of six, eight and ten days, after which improvement and convalescence uninterruptedly will follow several days.
162. Till the materia medica is complete, occasional diseases may occur for which no remedy may be found to cover its totality.
163. In which case a perfect cure cannot be expected.
164. It is more probable that a good selection of remedy has not been made than that no remedy exists among those proven. The small number of symptoms is no obstacle to a cure provided the few symptoms if uncommon and characteristic are well matched by the remedy selected.
165. Where the similimum cannot be found no favorable results need be expected from an unhomoeopathic prescription.
