Not therefore by schematizing, by reducing in number, or by blending with clinical material, the drug-effects on the healthy we have brought together, do I conceive that the Materia Medica of Homoeopathy will receive further improvement. In fact, I am of the same mind now as I was n 1879, when reviewing attempts at reconstruction by Drs. Jousset and Espanet. [See British Journal of Homoeopathy, xxxvii., 257.] I deprecated any attempt to substitute such studies of drugs for our existing symptomatology. “Let this,” I wrote, “stand as it is, [+ Of course, neither there nor here am I minimizing the need of fresh provings.
But on this score I spoke so fully at the International Homoeopathic Congress of 1891, that it is needless to repeat myself on the present occasion.] and let our work upon it be something like that of theologians upon their sacred books. As with them, let our best endeavors be made to enrich, to purify, and to illuminate the text. Then let those competent for the task give so commentaries upon it, elucidating its language. Let the teachers of Materia Medica in our schools publish from time to time their systematic lectures, embodying (as these must do) al the side slights which from toxicology, from the physiological laboratory, and from therapeutic experience they can bring to bear upon its study.
These will answer to treatises on doctrinal and practical theology; and then, for the sermons which expound and apply particular texts, let us have clinical records showing the bearing of pathogenetic symptoms upon the phenomena of disease. In this way, while we shall lose no grain of fact which can be made available in the comparison of drug-action with morbid conditions, there will be supplied to every student of the Materia Medica a general knowledge of its constituents, of their sphere and kind of action, of their characteristic features and ascertained effectiveness, which shall send him forth fully equipped for using them in the treatment of disease.
There is thus abundance of work for all who desire to labor in the field of Materia Medica, and the more there is done of the kind the better for the future practitioners of our method.”.
Now that, in the Cyclopaedia, the text of our Materia Medica has been enriched, purified and illuminated, I the more earnestly urge its being left alone, and no attempt being made to substitute for it the result of any extractive or other process. The rest of the work suggested remains open; as it is adequately performed, the further improvement desiderated will accrue. I would especially call for commentaries, elucidative and exegetical; and would suggest that those most competent for such a task are the specialists of our school-the neurologists, the oculists, the aurists, the gynecologists.
To the study by such men of the symptomatology of disease, aided by post-mortem examination and experiments on animals, we owe the great advances in pathology which have marked the last sixty years. May not similar investigation, when directed to pharmacology, achieve like results? The phenomena of drug-disease have also their meaning, and lend themselves to patient interpretation. They are not themselves to be forgotten, and the phrase which explains them substituted, and more than the clinical features of idiopathic disease are to be merged in its nosological name. But the explanation illumines them, makes them coherent, intelligible, memorable; they become part of our mental furniture, and are not mere strings of symptoms to be learned by heart.
A series of studies, by experts in each departments of the neurotic a phenomena of the oxalic and picric acids, of Agaricus Bisulphide of carbon, Hypericum, Lathyrus, Osmium Phosphorus, Physostigma, Secale, Zinc.; of the eye-symptoms of Ammoniacum, Aurum, Digitalis, Euphrasia, Macrotin, Naphthaline, Ruta, Santonine and Spigelia; the tinnitus of Quinine, the Salicylica, Coca and Chenopodium; and the pelvic disorder occasioned by Ferrum, Lilium, Murex, Sabina and Xanthoxylum-a series of such studies, I say, would enrich the very life-blood of our practice, and make us all better fitted to deal with the morbid states come daily before us.
DISCUSSION.
THE CHAIRMAN: Before the discussion of this paper I would like to announce that the action of surgery will meet in this room at 3 o’clock this afternoon under the charge of Dr. John E. James, temporary chairman. I would also give notice on behalf of the World’s Congress Auxiliary that it desires all members in attendance upon the Congress to register in the basement at the official registry. This is distinct, ladies and gentlemen, from your registration in Room 2 under the auspices of the Congress and the American Institute of Homoeopathy.
The discussion on Dr. Hughes’s paper will be opened by Dr. J.P. Dake, of Nashville, Tennessee.
DR. DAKE: Ladies and Gentleman: It seems hardly necessary for me to say anything upon this paper of Dr. Hughes. Dr. Hughes and I have been associated in work for several years and we quite agree in our views. However, there are some points in which I must place a little dissent from the address. While I agree with him fully that the proper publication of all provings should be in the narrative from just as the symptoms have occurred from the first day or the first hour until the last; still, for the convenience of the profession and the busy practitioner, I hold that it is necessary to have some sort of minor arrangement or, as Dr. Hughes calls it, extractive work applied.
I must confess that my use of the Materia Medica, as we have had it in its schematic form, has been useful to me, and I only not agree as yet to cast it aside. Of course, the cutting up of symptoms by an arrangement, as we have had from Hahnemann down, does separate them and take them out of their connection, but the physician, while using the schematic form to find what he is after, ought, in my judgment, to refer constantly to the original record, and particularly when he has a case that requires much study of remedies.
There you have it in those connections, and we must look upon the effects of drugs as drug diseases. Belladonna produces a Belladonna disease, and we ought to take it in its entirely as we do a case for which we are prescribing.
I cannot entirely agree, therefore, with Dr. Hughes in what the says in regard to the work in Boston by Drs. Wesselhoeft and Sutherland, and in what he says with regard to the work being done in Baltimore by the Investigation Club.
I have had in years past a little controversy with some of my English friends in regard to this matter. I hold that when the symptomatology of a drug is properly taken and properly studied that it is possible, by a study of those records, to know something of what are the characteristic symptoms of the drug. I hold that there is no other way safely to determine what are the characteristic symptoms of a drug. To depend upon clinical experience will not do. We have been misled often by such attempts.
I once made this point, in answer to some of my English friends, that while we may have a map of the United States in detail, giving every river and every county line, and the location of every city, and perhaps of every village, still it should be possible to give an outline map of the United States that will not be misleading, even if it does not give us all the information that we may desire.
For that reason I hold that it is possible, when provings are rightly made and rightly recorded, to have an abstract of Materia Medica that will comprise the characteristic or more prominent and persistent symptoms of each drug.
I will not detain you, but wish to make this remark, that the future improvement of the Materia Medica depends not so much upon the arrangement of the material we now have as upon the production of better material. The provings should be made with all the care, and recorded with all the case, that you may see in any other department of science. This is a matter of experiment. Experiments ought to be performed with every precaution that is possible, against illusion, against error and corruption.
It is a fact, that I may have occasion to mention again before we get through with our Congress, that provings have been made here and there and everywhere by busy physicians, by people who are full of theoretical ideas and of pathological notions, that make their appearance in their provings. Provings have been made by persons who are not even acquainted with anatomy, so as to be able to locate their symptoms in attempting to describe them.
These are faults which must be remedied, and to do that we will ave to have this matter conducted by persons competent to supervise it, by provers who are in the right conditions to have the effects of the drug reflected properly, and to have all the symptoms recorded in a plain and proper manner.
THE CHAIRMAN: The paper by Dr. Hughes will be further discussed by Dr. T.F. Allen of New York City.
Dr. ALLEN said: Ladies and Gentlemen: I have listened with the greatest interest to the reading of Dr. Hughes’s paper, but confess my disappointment that in it be alludes to the Cyclopaedia of Drug Pathogenesy, or the improved Materia Medica, standing as it is, a the sacred books of the Bible.
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.