Again, in other agents proven on the healthy, often such symptoms or syndromes are accepted newly in a drug picture which have affected exactly such patients as are cured by this agent. To the so-called pure materia medica such reports as observations on patients do not belong. But in the difficulty of working out the individual characteristics of a drug picture one must put up with these additions in the meantime but use the proper caution. Still these supplementing in-corporations of observations on cured patients are justified up to a certain extent. Because if one can actually say: this or that agent has had the best healing effect in thin, blond sensitive persons, then we say practically the same as if we proceed from the basis of a study upon the healthy; thin, blond sensitive persons react most markedly to this agent. Because we see the curative action of a remedy also as a reaction of indeterminate sensitivity. However, one should remain conscious of the origin of all purely clinically derived addition symptoms.
STATE OF MATERIA MEDICA
It should be very clear that the homoeopathic materia medica is not rigid or finished. And the knowledge of single medicinal substances, whose working domain is de facto very different, is also in varying stages. In the one drug as perhaps crataegus, the emphasis lies still on the empiric organ specific side; in another, as perhaps sulphur, is the elaboration of the drug picture characteristic of homoeopathy preponderant. In the presentation these differences must come distinctly to expression, each drug picture must be conceived and represented as possessing a special individuality in itself. But the student in many cases again desires another selection or another emphasis: to one from the beginning the clinical or the organ specific reports are retained, for another the importance lies more in the subtle delineating detail symptoms. For each method of consideration there is available room in homoeopathic materia medica in the various elaborations. The inconceivably great difficulties of this study will only interest those who are profoundly convinced of the meaning of this homoeopathic materia medica in theoretic and practical respects.
Leeser, a Consultant Physician at the Stuttgart Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the German Central Society of Homeopathic Physicians, fled Germany in 1933 after being expelled by the German Medical Association. In England Otto Leeser joined the staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He returned to Germany in the 1950s to run the Robert Bosch Homeopathic Hospital in Stuttgart, but died shortly after.
Otto Leeser wrote Textbook of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, Actionsand Medicinal use of Snake Venoms, Solanaceae, The Contribution of Homeopathy to the Development of Medicine, Homeopathy and chemotherapy, and many articles submitted to The British Homeopathic Journal,