I do not say that my provings are as good as Dr. Ravenna’s. He gives no provings at all. He states facts, makes statements, and when you read them you would suppose a person who had taken Cactus had fallen with an attack of epilepsy, in which he rolled and writhed on the ground. Others, again, there are who think the person died of heart disease or suffocation or of violent cough or tremendous haemorrhages, which in reading, would appeal even one accustomed to sights of horror. I say, from the proving of Cactus, at first thought, it might be haemorrhage, heart disease, epilepsy-all these things they suppose I might be troubled with, but I got nothing of the kind. I said to Dr. Hughes:
These are strong evidence of the value of the proving. It has been ascertained that Dr. Ravenna took certain quantities. Some friends found among his papers that he had taken the third attenuation to get these symptoms. That was a good many years after Ravenna was dead that somebody wrote that; but Dr. Hughes don’t think such a statement is going to get into Materia Medica, that Dr. Ravenna, by means of the third attenuation, produced these results. I do not believe them; I do not want to impugn anybody’s veracity, but I do not think they are correct. I merely suggest that Cactus, instead of being a medicine that would produce violent effects, was, on the other hand, an innocent potherb.
DR. HAWKES: Just one word or two upon this point. You would look in vain through all the works on Materia Medica or my name, but if I cannot claim to be a writer I can claim to be a reader and a user. I wish in this connection and under this statement to offer one world of warning, and that is this: This it may be and is, a very honorable thing to notice a medicine which has been well tried and well proven; but he incurs a very heavy responsibility who excludes from our Materia Medica certain medicines, because they have not been so fully used. There is one, Muritius Upia (?) that has served me in the very best possible way.
I have learned to use it from just one word repertory, introduced by Drysdale. I refer to Allen’s big book, and that contains a reference to Upia, and I followed that up, but now that drug is excluded by Drysdale. I refer to Allen’s big book, and that contains a reference to Upia, and I followed that up, but now that drug is excluded from the Hand Book, which I use, by the way, alternately as a hand book and an Indian club. It is excluded also from other works, with reference to which we have heard this morning, but I wish to say a word, the symptom of a burning in the left ovary has proved to be of the very greatest value. My work, of which I must not speak now, has some connection with that part of the body.
I would not hesitate if occasion required it to open the abdomen, and if this were the proper place I could bring case after case before you that had been condemned for operation, and where operation-I am not saying now whether that was a virtue or not, but that this drug, a description of which you will find in any of these. Materia Medicas, but is fairly well and fully spoken of in the bigger work of Allen. I would say that this is a direct cause of evil; that one solitary instance which I., as a user of the drug, rather than a writer of Materia Medica, would speak of and mention as a word of warning to those who are perhaps a little too ready to cut out from our Materia Medica.
F. PARKE LEWIS, M.D., of Buffalo, New York, then addressed the Congress on the subject of “The Value of Specialties in Medicine”.
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.