A few years since, at a meeting of this society at Atlantic City, I read an article on what I called definitive prescribing. The drugs I re-proved were Aconitum, Cuprum metallicum, Mercurius vivus, Lycopodium and Sulphur.
This work consisted in new kind of re-proving. Various types of both sexes were subjected to the influence of a definite drug in a definite potency. Parenthetically I might add that dilutions is a bad term, as it is quite misleading and inaccurate as well. I firmly believe that the provings should be made without the provers knowledge. Then nothing is imagined. For, imagination rules the world (General Bonaparte).
By collecting what developed a kind of numerical superiority complex appeared on the horizon of the provers. It is to be remembered in this connection that the remedy is definite and its force or potency is also definite. Aconitum is the 3rd. potency, for instance, is a very definite thing and will remain such if applied in Siam or in Philadelphia, and its definitive prescriptional value in a diverse host of unsuspecting male and female provers will be the same.
In other words, despite the differing mental and physical terrain worked upon such and such would bite through their defense mechanisms and assert their symptom rights as sick producing powers. Just as the eye surgeon recognizes the unfailing merit of atropin sulphate in material dose as a pupillary dilator preparatory to a cataract removal, just so should one try to get an unfailing concise codex for the drug in the dynamized state.
In the listing the writer has attempted to add the attendant modalities in the same fashion, that of descending import. As Dr.Boger well calls them, “the natural modifiers” of disease, they not only are of great import for purposes of exact disease resemblance, but will serve as means to differentiate between remedies. This may have been the main reason why Hahnemann considers von Boenninghausen such a skilful prescriber, for it was due to the latter that these natural modifiers were first discovered.
The following is my re-proving of the Viola odorata and it will be at once seen to be an often indicated remedy in respiratory disease.
THE DESCENDING DEFINITIVE SCALE. VIOLA ODORATA 3RD. POTENCY. [1] Cough, dry in the daytime but loose at night. Expectoration is thick and yellow but often white. The cough is always worse on lying down with frequent nasal stoppage. a morning painless hoarseness and tickling in the throat may be consensual. [2] dyspnoea only at night and in the morning, often leftsided and often knife-like. Worse when breathing. Dyspnoea in warm weather, from pressure, and when the belly is bloated. Lung soreness better after the cough, and fresh air ameliorates the dyspnoea and pain. [3] Uncontrollable, fidgety sleeplessness after midnight.
The lung pain, constant cough or thirst prevents sleeping. Confused and frightening dreams. Unrefreshing sleep. Laughing in sleep. [4] Headache and earache. The former is most typically frontal,dull and intermittent, with morning aggravation. May be sharp, may be occipital. Better from coffee. Better from cold water application. The earache is worse on the left side. The pain is sticking and sharp or dull. the deafness is worse when the nose is stopped. It is worse swallowing. The ache often intermits. Hears better at times, then worse.
[5] In morning, an upper belly distension. Nausea followed by slimy vomiting. Worse after eating (seen in soreness, weight, bloat and belching). Belching relieves. Worse from hot coffee. Worse from milk [crampy diarrhoea]. Marked hunger for breakfast and luncheon. Worse from sugary grape juice.
[6] Dry mouth with thirst in the morning. Dry throat in the day time, often with no thirst. Dry tongue, hardly movable so affected, better after breakfast. Dry lips, [constantly wetting them]. Dry gums [also a constant wetting.]
[7] Constant right side backache, dull and sharp, worse at night, worse walking, worse sitting, better by rubbing, better by lying down, better by standing, better by heat.
[8] Cold face sweat worse in morning; the sweat is worse in the back [not cold]. Worse after exercise. At night when covered, the sweating improves the lung pain. Sweats one minute chills the next. Chills generalized worse at night [especially 1-2 a.m.], worse motion, better from urination, shaking chills and goose-flesh.
[9] Giddy with weakness in morning, joints of lower members give way. Heaviness of body with drowsiness, [daytime] worse on any bodily motion, with blue nails and face and palpitation. Vomiting precedent.
[10] Burning states. [a] burning under nose. [b] burning micturition at night and burning before act which is long in coming [at night], [c] burning raw throat, [d] burning back, [e] burning epigastrium, [f] burning in stomach. [g] eyes burn [h] burning rectum with painful diarrhoea, [i] both feet burn, [j] burning low down in the throat [like a lump there] 65 percent of symptoms left sided.
MENTAL SYMPTOMS:
No ambition [lazy all days]; frightening dreams; cannot quiet herself at night, she wants to walk around and hates the night to come; after luncheon, very nervous, shook all over but the feet; started to cry; dreams very frightening and confusing; dreams of being in a fight; very restless, always wants to be moving around; restlessness worse around 7:30 p.m.; awakened at night; thought she heard noises [a little scared]; restless around 3.30 p.m.; feels like crying around noon; bad dreams about automobile accidents; prover wanted to laugh instead of cry when by her dead friend; noses make her jump; confusing dreams; bad dreams of dead people; laughing in sleep; fidgety, worse in the daytime; nervous and fidgety; dreams of water and swimming; queer dreams of thirst [drinking out of a large pitcher freely]; prover felt lazy around supper time. PHILADELPHIA, PA.
DISCUSSION.
DR.WOODBURY: I verified Vipera in the 1000th. in a case of phlebitis and also we had a man at our evening clinic in Boston who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He had the same periodicity, returned symptoms at the same period in the year. I gave him Lachesis with the idea of giving Crotalus later, but he never had to have it. I was relieved.
I am always interested in Dr.Macfarlans provings. We had the history of it once before at another meeting. It originated with his father, was carried down through a good many years, and Dr.Hering had the benefit of it in the compilation of the Guiding Symptoms. You will find many references to provings by his father scattered about through the older literature.
DR.SLOAN: I would like to ask if any of his provers showed that wrist symptom that I referred to.
DR.MACFARLAN: There were a few provers who developed that, not very many. It is marvelous for pneumonia and bronchitis. It helps respiratory diseases in the most miraculous way, especially when it is associated with the earache.
DR. OLDS:I am very much interested in these provings of Dr.Macfarlans and I wanted to ask if there will be an opportunity later to put forth a motion to the house regarding the possibility of the association taking up the subject of provings. We havent had any real large, constructive provings for a long time. I feel that that is one of the very essential things for us as homoeopaths.
