I suppose the choice of a title for this paper on the relationship of homoeopathic medical chest and the domestic guide to its use (constituting as they do the armamentarium) of the family in this period of scarcity of medical advisers) might be taken to mean that with a box of Humphrey’s or Hilton’s “specifics” the ordinary family should be encouraged to go ahead and do their own prescribing for any and all ailments that human flesh is heir to, but such, assuredly, is not my intention. But a word or two in respect to the title may not be amiss.
But recently it was my good fortune to hear that eminent commentator and lecturer on Browning, state that the Ring, in the great Victorian’s poem, The Ring and the Book, was to be interpreted as the symbol of the true marriage relation, and the Book, the Bible, as Holy Writ, according to which the spiritual man must live. All this is worked out to its ultimate perfection in what is perhaps Browning’s greatest work.
I am making, therefore, an application of this title to the professional and likewise to the lay prescriber of homoeopathic remedies, as follows: to us, in our philosophy, the Box might be taken to signify the source from which we derive our remedial agents, and the Book, the material medica which contains the indicators upon which we prescribe for the sick–The Box and the Book of homoeopathy.
Good speed the day when homoeopathic first aid will be a recognized part of not only civil military equipment, or as Dr. H. A. Roberts has recently emphasized, in using our remedies of the U. S. Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia, for which the late Dr. Carmichael and Dr. Lowell labored so long and so faithfully, we are as much within our legal rights as any practician of the regular school, with his latest edition of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, which unfortunately has recently excluded many a valued preparation of time honored usage, for the much vaunted coal tar products, the sulfa drugs, the barbiturates, and many another modern pharmaceutical, which will undoubtedly be used for a brief time and be relegated to limbo, along with a legion of its much heralded predecessors.
Already Dr. Margaret L. Tyler, whose demise is such a universal misfortune in world homoeopathy, in the final numbers of Homoeopathy, the crowning achievement of her chosen profession, has outlined in succinct and inimitable manner the principal remedies to be employed to advantage in shell-shock, as air raid precautions, and at first aid in the physical and psychic trauma of war. This work alone should place her in the foremost rank as one of the great benefactors of the race. All credit to her forethought in placing homoeopathy in the forefront of true medical science.
Along with lay and professional cooperation in England may be mentioned the activities of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy in this country, where there has been a growing interest in the lay movement, mention of which will be made a little later on this paper.
It must be recalled that in Hahnemann’s own time, lay societies for the promulgation of the knowledge of its principles and the spread of its practice was not only encouraged, but actually undertaken by the founder of homoeopathy himself.
From the early days in which Hahnemann announced that he would accept no one as a pupil who had not previously read the Organon and Boenninghausen’s Homoeopathy, the sale of domestic cases containing the remedies commonly recommended for family use had begun to flourish, and these were obtainable from the homoeopathic chemists, until the ban placed upon dispensing by the apothecaries.
But from this simple means for homoeopathic education to the first aid kit of the ordinary household at the present tie, it is indeed a far cry. There has ever been a minority, however, of lay users of homoeopathic remedies, who, with boxes of attenuated remedies and their treatises on domestic practice, have kept alive the traditions of the founders of homoeopathy.
Jahr,no less indomitable in his industry and advocacy of homoeopathy than Boenninghausen, was the author not only of his massive manuals, but also of epitomies of the materia medica, as exemplified in his famous Therapeutic Guide, and his remarkable little work, entitled Jahr’s Ten Remedies.
Then there was another of these lesser works, which, if we recall correctly, comprised some fifteen or sixteen of the most often indicated remedies. But chief among these family guides was the first edition of Hering’s work, The Homoeopathic, or Domestic Physician (copyrighted in 1838), which it might be well to recall for its exactitude and wide-spread popularity.
This work contains the materia medica for forty-six remedies, listed according to their therapeutic uses. It is interesting to note that these are indexed according to numbers; and where may one find a more efficient array of medicines in so small a compass?
So well chosen are they that, were we to enumerate the corresponding complaints amenable to their curative powers, it would be necessary to include no less formidable complaints (to quote merely a few) than abortion, abscess, affections of the mind, apoplexy, asthma, burns and scalds, catarrh, children’s disease, cholera, colic, concussions, convulsions, coughs, croup, diarrhoea, gonorrhoea, dysentery, erysipelas, fainting, fevers, giddiness, haemorrhage, haemorrhoids, hiccough, infections, itch, labor pains, loss of hair, menstrual disorders milk fever, nettle rash, palpitation, pleurisy, poisons (ill effects of), rashes, rheumatism, running ears, scurvy, sleeplessness, small-pox, styes, sun stroke, tape worm, teething, tetanus, thrush, tumors, ulcers, varioloid, vomiting, whitlow, worms, wounds–quite as imposing an array of disorders as complied by an official first aid or army kit, which we read comprises some twenty-six (or is it forty-six?) drugs, including of course the “big five” of the sulfa drugs and blood plasma (not a drug at all, but merely the product of the venesection of Hahnemann’s time in reverse, if we may so express ourselves).
And how the old Master’s campaign for the abolishment of this diabolical procedure won its spurs against the jousters of his time! (And only in his life time did he see its complete demolition.) Had he lived a century later, however, he would have seen, within the past three or four decades at any rate, its recrudescence in such affections as eclampsia, cerebral hyperaemia, hypertension, etc., not to mention the more or less questionable use of the spinal puncture, which, while seemingly palliative, may be result eventually in nervous depletion.
It is interesting to note the following references to Hering’s work, including remarks upon George Newman’s Homoeopathic Family Assistant (British Homoeopathic Journal, vol. III, 1846) in which the reviewer criticizes the latter book, as possessing the “cardinal vice” of “an extreme vagueness and inaccuracy in the description of disease,” and as being not only an “ill-written and mischievous” treatise, but withal a “clumsy compilation,” which would not be noticed at all, “were it not that we know there is such a demand for family guides and domestic assistants” that “any book. . . which assumes such a title, is sure of a sale.” (How great, or alas, how little, is the present demand for domestic treatises since the above was written.).
“It is quite refreshing,” the reviewer continues, “to turn from this clumsy compilation of Mr. Newman to the original and forcible work of Dr. Hering in which there is a certain gossiping manner that may at first sight give the impression of its being superficial; but a little more perusal will convince the reader that… is merely owing to the peculiarity of style which Dr. Hering has adopted; and, in reality, that it is book deserving of attentive study, even by medical practitioners, as it is evidently the result of much patient observation by an independent and accurate mind.
What pleases us most about the book is the sound common sense which pervades the whole of it;” and aside from a few obvious (not flagrant) misconceptions the reviewer concludes that “we heartily recommend this little work as a most useful and innocent family counsellor; and should not be surprised if, in time, it became, both for this country and America, the Homoeopathic Buchanan.” How accurate way this reviewer of a century ago in respect to this domestic book of books!.
Hering’s modest introduction open with the observation that the book …. is designed as a guide to enable persons to effect a cure, in most cases of disease, by the use of homoeopathic medicines, which are never injurious, and which rarely fail in affording the desired relief. It offers itself to those whom experience has convinced of the inestimable advantages of the new of Hahnemannic system of medicine, with the familiarity of an old friend and…is intended as a Domestic Physician, to which parents may refer in most cases of indisposition in their families, and which will obviate the necessity of consulting a physician on every trifling occasion.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.