Thus is explained that here the homoeopathic materia medica can neglect a number of positively effective drug preparations without harm. So far as it possesses a valuable nucleus (also chemically considered), these recur in the plant or animal products. In this natural association its drug value can be evaluated better. This holds also for single substances already briefly mentioned, for example, formic acid.
If we would follow, the chemical construction plan with the carbon compound beginning with methane in the one, with benzol in the other series, then we could hardly find a way out of the lab- yrinth of the medicinally unused or unuseable preparations. Our knowledge of the relation of actions with the chemical structure is much too superficial and fragmentary to serve as a guiding thread. The infinite laborious fruitless attempts to obtain or to increase definite actions through chemical construction leads at every step to unexplainable surprises. Addition or subtraction of an accessory group or shifting in the arrangement of the groups in similarly composed compounds (isomers) may lose the effect. An explanation is not possible because we do not know the receptive grouping of the cell chemistry sufficiently well. A completion of the testing of all carbon compounds is unattainable. So far the chief weight has been placed upon details because the gaps between the results are so great and frequent that the greater associations can no longer be seen. On the contrary if one has ascertained the actions of a series of important drugs from the group of carbon compounds in the uttermost breadth, then the mutual trends and the deviations will be at least visible, even if not explainable.
In the series of carbon preparations selected here for practical reasons this was distinct. Graphites with its elementary carbon properties still permits considerable group affinity to silicic acid and very extensive constitutional effects to be reconized. Petroleum with its mixture of higher carburetted hydrogens, particularly from the paraffin series, still has very similar skin affinities, but less connection to metabolism, less constitutional involvement but shows an increase in the sensory actions by virtue of its volatile content. Wood and animal charcoal in all their similarities with graphites stress the note of depressed gas exchange and increase of fermentative processes. And the line from carbo vegetablis and animals to kreosote corresponds, perhaps, with that from graphites to petroleum. In the mixture of phenols, kreosote, the extent of action has already narrowed; it is less “constitutional” than carbo, but has the septico-malignant side more intensely as well as the necrotizing. With pure phenol the action becomes still more one sided and proceeds very rapidly to the vasomotor-trophic centers. The trend remains standard also after the entrance of the carboxyl group, COOH, in phenol, also in salicylic acid. But however this substitution (of COOH) seems to add a peripheral affinity for the supportive tissue which seems to proceed from the agreement with benzol ring. The same also holds for the divalent phenol from the paraffin series, oxalic acid. And this affinity becomes milder in the weak acids of the paraffin series up to formic acid. In the last the medicinal intensity, at least with oral administration is much weaker because in contrast to the cyclic acids and oxalic acid, it is more rapidly subjected to oxidative splitting. The nitrogen containing acids, picric and hydrocyanic stand between as outspoken central nervous system poisons with a tendency to paralysis. Here the influence of the organically bound nitrogen becomes obvious; this plays a very essential role in plant and animal poisons.
Finally a complete evaluation of these substances from the crossing would be possible only by a survey from the other end of the bridge, from the plant and animal medicinal substances.
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,