Chapter IV.-How Drugs Cure. Pages 70 to 76, &n 19 to 34.
Chapter V.-Disease versus Disease; Unlikes and Likes. Pages 77 to 91, aphorism 35 to 52.
Chapter VI.-The Methods of Medication, viz.: Allopathic, Antipathic or Enantiopathic, Homoeopathic. (Etymology.) Exposition. Pages 91 to 104, aphorism 53 to 71.
Chapter VII.-The Study of Diseases, Acute and Chronic, and their Management. Pages 105 to 111, aphorism 72 to 82.
Chapter VIII.-Examination of a Patient with Acute, Chronic, or Epidemic Disease. The “Genius Epidemicus.” The “Genius Chronicus.” Pages 111 to 119, aphorism 83 to 104.
Chapter IX.-Agents of Cure; the Study of Drug-Effects; “Primary” and “Secondary” Effects; Provings and Cures; Idiosyncrasies; Individualization; Conduct of Provings; a True Materia Medica. Pages 119 to 135, aphorism 105 to 145.
Chapter X.-Practical Directions and Suggestions; Selection of the Homoeopathic Remedy; Similitude of Symptoms in”Totality;” in “Characteristics;” Drug-Action during Treatment; Dosage; Drug- aggravation; Question of External Treatment; Management of Drug- Remedies; “Local Diseases;” Antecedents; The Three Miasms of True “Chronic Diseases;” Previous Allopathic Treatment; other circumstances. Pages 135 to 157, aphorism 146 to 209.
Chapter XI.-Special Mental Symptoms; Insanity: Paroxysmal Diseases (Intermitting, Recurrent, Alternating); Intermittent Fever, etc., Cure. Pages 157 to 170, aphorism 210 to 244.
Chapter XII.-Additional Practical Directions; Management of Cases and Remedies; Dosage; Repetition; “Favorite Remedies.” Pages 170 to 177, & 264 to 271.
Chapter XIII.-Pharmacy; Selection and Preparation of Medicines. Pages 177 to 179, aphorism 264 to 271.
Chapter XVI.-The Single Remedy; The Minimum Dose; Proportional Effect of Various Doses; Dynamic Nature of Drug- Effects; Forms of Administration; Susceptibility of Living and Diseased Parts to Drug-action; Transmission of Effects, by Sympathy, to Other Parts; The Use of the Skin as a Channel of Medication, etc. Pages 179 to 186, aphorism 272 to 292.
Chapter XV.-(Restored to place); Mesmerism or “Hypnotism,” (“Suggestive Therapeutics”); with Notes. Pages 227 to 230.
Chapter XVI.-Notes upon the General Text. Pages 187 to 225.
Index. Pages 231 to 244.
Aetiology.
PART II.-After the special part just discussed the next is AEtiology. No one doubts the importance of this, and it night seen sufficient here to name it as essential in a complete course on Clinical Medicine in any college of any school.
In Homoeopathy, however, it acquires extraordinary importance, inasmuch as a successful prescription so often pivots upon the clear perception of causes, often remote in time and recondite in nature. Ever alert, ever suspicious of this, we should be!.
I recall a most important case of metrorrhagia. Large sums of money, spent in both medical and surgical endeavors, and years of time, had brought the patient to feel that the pursuit was well nigh in vain, when a Homoeopathic physician in Heidelberg, Germany, inquiring into the antecedents of the attack in the beginning, elicited the fact that it began after bathing in icy cold water, six years before, on the coast of Maine. Cure was then promptly initiated by giving Rhus tax., 1x, twice a day, on this exact indication.
Previous abuse of drugs is a common aetiology. Cathartics, mercurials, and quinine are every-day drugs, and the recognition of their part in complicating, and even in originating, disease symptoms, is our daily duty, Besides, the latent remains of the original maladies, require treatment. Dr. Raue insists upon and initial dose of Nux vomica, after prior Allopathic treatment, in every case.
A strain years ago, or a wound of nervous tissue, or an old bruise may, when recalled, be of prime significance, demanding a corresponding remedy, as Rhus tax, Hypericum, of Arnica.
Constitutional hindrances often requires the interpolation of Sulph, Calc. etc.
To ignore causes is, in our school of practice, to tie our hands behind us and to insure many failures.
In this connection, “Baffling Causes” deserve special notice, for, by these our best work may be, and sometimes is, spoiled. Thus, bad nursing, disobedience to orders, and many things of detail may ruin an otherwise good cure. As a glaring example, a young man, the subject of gonorrhoea and under Homoeopathic treatment, but, preparing for a pharmacy examination, was required to taste some thirty different drugs within a few days; got worse, naturally, but did not think to mention it until many days afterwards. Many such cases occur.
Symptomatology.
PART III.-Physiological, pathological, diagnostic, pathognomonic, pharmacodynamic, prognostic, therapeutic. Also, dietetic, curative, toxical, pathogenetic, and surgical.
This is the most essential of all studies in the practice of medicine, and as above outlined, most comprehensive. It belongs exclusively to no one school, and deserves universal prominence in the college curricula and in medical writing. The writers recognize this, but no college does it even scant justice. In Homoeopathy, above all, it is the sine qua non, and at least as much time should be given to it as is assigned, for instance, to the study of Obstetrics.
The above order is planned for a graded course. The pathological, the pharmacodynamic, and the prognostic divisions require subdivision, thus; The first two into “general” and “special;” the last, the prognostic, into prognosis; of natural diseases, of the action of remedies, and of the interaction of both.
Considering these divisions seriatim, we note:.
1. Physiological Symptomatology.-This is simply a narrative of abundant life, with its conditions, causes, susceptibilities, and powers. Its “totality” is the rule of comparison for all the rest, and should be ever before the mind of the thorough physician, as mens sana in corpore sano. Deviations from this standard are Diseases. A few lectures under this head, following the “schema” of Hahnemann, viz.: the anatomical and physiological order, would be fruitful of intelligent interest in the subsequent study of abnormal symptomatology, whether natural or of drugs, artificially applied. It is in the physiological field that symptom-interpretation should begin, and it should thenceforth never be neglected.
2. Pathological Symptomatology is as yet taught only incidentally in the lectures on “Practice of Medicine,” and in connection with the special diseases discussed. Even if there be a separate chair of pathology this is now held to mean tissue- change, plus bacteriology, almost solely; hence, symptomatology comes to be regarded by the student as inferior, and later on he will he heard denouncing the fine art of “symptom-hunting”-for “fine art” it is.
One pathological specialty is characteristic of Homoeopathy, viz., “chronic miasms,” according to Hahnemann. Chronic diseases, when transmitted to offspring undergo “potentization” in successive generations; resulting in latent, but all-powerful poisoning; whereby family life is more and more vitiated. Family similarity is often available in choosing remedies for one after another of its members. For the symptoms, see Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases, vol., i., also the Organon.
As the medical mind is now constituted, even among the Hahnemannians, there are many important symptoms in any “totally” which are overlooked in the selection of the remedy, or at least belittled, until their significance is demonstrated by physical exploration. Thus, a physician prescribing for a neuralgic rheumatism of the left thigh found no suggestion in a co-existing trivial complication, viz., a semi-occasional slight back or cough, until, being requested to “sound the lungs,” he discovered (only) a blowing sound in the mitral region of the heart, due to an unsuspected and incipient endocarditis. Thereupon the whole malady acquired a new character and the curative remedy was speedily found by the totality of symptoms, before unseen, viz., Aconite.
In a similar but older case the cough remained uncured and very troublesome until the totality was added to by a cholera morbus, requiring Arsenicum. After this drug the cough also got well, but the pathological suggestion, when offered, was resented, as tending to “wreck true Homoeopathy.” Yet this is truly symptom-hunting of the best type.
In pathological symptomatology, also, the Hahnemannian schema is our best guide, and a good repertory is the ever-ready handbook for its orderly and interpretative study. The best for this purpose is that found in Jahr and Possart’s Manual, and which should be separately bound. Its introductory comparisons of drugs, antidotes, etc., come into play at a later stage of the same studies.
The detail of symptoms as here given is both comprehensive and suggestive, and may be extended at will. Bath “general” and “special” pathology are here represented. However,this book needs to be supplemented by the works of Tanner, Findlayson. etc., on “Clinical Medicine;” for this is what it is, and this phrase will be a proper title of the full professorship of this whole subject. As all professors should hold clinics, the title must no longer imply a faculty scapegoat.