place of the menses. The menses are always preceded and atter led, for the first two days, with great suffering, pain in the back and headache. Menses delay for a few days. Leucorrhoea all the time, but profuse ten days after the menses cease. Leucorrhoea acrid, corroding the parts. When standing feels as if "everything" would fall out from the genitals. Very tender about the vulva. In addition to what is called "leucorrhoea," patient has a discharge like white of egg, coming on immediately after the menses cease, lasting ten days, sometimes longer, profuse and debilitating. Severe pain in the small of the back; great pain in the back part of the legs; pain in the inside of the legs above the knees. Coition is very painful, yet she has almost constant desire, especially during the time she has "white of egg" discharge, amounting to "furor uterinus." After coition feels prostrated, and has distress in the stomach; commences at once to spit up the last meal, or has the taste of it in her mouth, and the result is she has this taste in her mouth all the time. The "white of egg" discharge usually becomes a red, bloody fluid at last. As soon as the "white of egg" discharge ceases she becomes irritable and angry with every one, and cannot endure the idea of coition; any reference to it makes her angry. She has constant desire to pass water, and when a little is passed she is relieved, and it seems to her that if she could pass a great quantity of water she would feel still better. In the morning this desire is less. Withal, there is, at times, a discharge of hot water from the womb, which is so profuse as to wet the bed and all her clothes.

A vaginal examination revealed prolapsus uteri, with congested and indurated os. Lifting the womb to its place, and holding it there, relieved all the symptoms at once. Patient remained comfortable as long as she retained the recumbent position.

Various remedies were tried, with no relief; indeed, I could expect none after a thorough two years' trial by one of our most able homœopathic physicians. In this condition, to gain time, a glass globe was inserted in the vagina, which held the womb in place. This allowed the patient to resume the superintendence of her household affairs, and gave her entire comfort, until the hard ball produced irritation of the womb sufficient to require her to resume the recumbent position again. During the interval she was free from all complaints, and ate and slept well. After nearly a year of comparative freedom from pain, she was again

prostrated with all of her former sufferings. All her gloomy forebodings returned, and she was about to consult Dr. P., of Syracuse, who has the reputation of treating all female complaints with great success.

No medicine that she had taken had given her the least relief, and I felt that medication would not help her, but as she urged me to try something new, I gave her a powder of the first decimal trituration of hydratis can., to be dissolved in a glass of water, and to be taken two spoonsful every three hours; also a few drops of hydrastis, to be put in pint of soft water, and used as injection three times a day.

At this time gastric distress was intense, and the "furor" was almost unbearable. In a few hours the gastric symptoms were relieved, and the erotic condition ceased, together with the "white of egg" discharge.

The patient has been free from distress for three months, and seems to be restored to usual and comfortable health. Menstruation is not attended with pain, and the patient has gained flesh and strength.

ARTICLE XLVII.

The Proving of Drugs. By C. W. BOYCE, M. D., of Auburn.

The editor of "The Quarterly Homœopathic Journal" (Boston, 1849) uses the following language:

"There is no disguising the fact that two distinct parties exist in the homeopathic school. This may be new to some physicians in this country, who have been led to believe that there is entire unanimity on all points amongst the homeopathic physicians in Europe; yet it is most indisputably true, and will not be new to those who are familiar with the German and French homœopathic literature.

"This division is not sectional or of recent date, as has been intimated. It originated with such able men as Drs. Moritz, Muller, Rau, Wolf, Trinks, Kretzschmar, Rummel, and others, who, nearly a quarter of a century ago, openly, freely and frankly declared their dissent from Hahnemann, and some of his theories, and the inference which he drew from them; more especially on the potence and psora theories, with their results. This gave rise to the organization of a distinct party in the school, in opposition

to the 'Hahemannian;' and the difference thus commenced has not only continued, but has widened of late by the frequent administration of the high potencies.'

"One party, then, adheres to homeopathy as founded and bequeathed to us by Hahnemann; this it calls pure homoeopathy. The other, accepting all that it believes to be confirmed by reason and experience, labors for the improvement and advancement of the new system, and by supplying where it perceive deficiencies, remedying imperfections, and replacing errors by truth, strives for a broader and more scientific foundation.* This is called rational homœopathy. In the fundamental principles of homœopathy, however, both parties agree. They are:

"1. The principle, similia similibus curantur.

"2. The proving of medicines on the healthy for the purpose of discovering the specific relation between the drug and the human organism.

"3. The consequent indication in disease.

"4. The efficacy of comparatively small doses.

5. The exhibition of single substances.

"6. Abiding the effects of each medicine.

"7. Attention to dietetics."

This, Mr. Chairman, is the statement, fairly made, of a partizan on the side of rational homœopathy, and I can but feel that it meets the views of pure homœopathists; at all events it can be taken as a basis of discussion.

Before we discuss these "fundamental principles," let us briefly review one point which stands at the commencement of an appreciation of what constitutes homœopathy," In the healthy condition of man there is an immaterial, vital principle which animates the material body, exercises an absolute sway, and maintains all its parts in the most admirable order and harmony, both of sensation and action, so that our indwelling rational spirit may freely employ these living, healthy organs for the superior purpose of our existence." (Organon, Sec. 9.) In a state of health we know nothing of the operation of this vital principle. All the functions are carried on without our knowledge and we live and enjoy existence. When the action of this vital principle is deranged it produces an abnormal condition which we call disease, and disease is made known to our senses by sensations and conditions which we call symptoms. Only the deranged action of this immaterial vital

Hygia, Vol. 32, No. 1.

principle can produce disease. Disease, then, primarily, is immaterial, and only becomes material, if at all, after a longer or shorter duration. If we confess, for argument's sake, that disease eventually becomes material, we have only to restore the vital principle to its normal action, and the disease removes or is removed, the immaterial removes the material. But, if we are able to know anything of the working of the human system, we know that any abnormal material in the system is the result of disease and not disease itself.

The deranged vital principle alone producing disease, and disease being made known only by symptoms, it follows that all we can know of disease is by the symptoms present; or, the symptoms are only the manifestations of the deranged vital principle. When we perceive no more symptoms we may be sure the disease is cured.

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In regard to remedies: These have corresponding components with the organism. The organism has its vital principle, the remedy has its spiritual power. "By the operation of injurious influences from without upon the healthy organism, influences which disturb the harmonious play of the functions, the vital principle, as a spiritual dynamic, cannot otherwise be assailed and affected than in a (dynamic) spiritual manner; neither can such morbid disturbances, or, in other words, such diseases, be removed by the physician, except in like manner by means of the spiritual (dynamic) countervailing agency of the suitable medicines acting upon the same vital principal, and this action is communicated by the sentient nerves everywhere distributed in the organism. So that curative medicines possess the faculty of restoring, and do actually restore, health with concomitant functional harmony by a dynamic influence only, acting upon the vital energies, after the morbid alterations in the health of the patient which are evident to the senses (the totality of the symptoms) have represented the disease to the attentive and observant physician as fully as may be requisite to effect a cure." (Organon, section 16.) Dr. Hempel says: "The doctrine of high potencies can be accounted for by this other doctrine, that the animus, the inmost power of every drug, is an efficient, immaterial, although substantial principle; in other words, an essence of power of which the visible drug con. stitutes the body, the material substance. It is upon the presence of this inmost principle that the real efficacy of the drug depends." (American Homoeopathic Observer, Sept., 1867, page 362.)

Dr. Potter writes me, on this point, as follows: "Disease is simply deranged or altered vital action, and that all the materiality that needs to be removed from the system is the results of disease. I think here is the primal error of allopathy, mistaking the results of disease for disease itself; hence, then, therapeutics are founded on the idea of eradicating an entity from the system. Allopathy fails in consequence of not looking beyond the results to the cause. This, I think, is clearly proved by your argument drawn from Dr. Dunham's case, also from the corresponding relation of dynamized drugs to the vital theory of disease. Who has an imagination sufficiently powerful to discover enough of palpable matter or materiality in the five thousandth attenuation of a drug to act upon material substances? To be rational he must call to his aid the dynamic or spiritual nature of his remedy. If there is one point more clear to my mind than any other in our science,' except 'similia similibus curantur,' it is this: that disease is deranged vital action, and that the curative action of drugs is not in material but in dynamic or spiritual force."

Thus much preliminary to a discussion of the "fundamental principles."

The first, or the law of similars, is happily not subject of dispute; and as this is so, we may pass to the second.

The proving of drugs on the healthy is of the first importance. Our mutual friend, Dr. Lippe, has kindly furnished me with a paper on this subject, which I will read:

"Ever since mankind was afflicted by diseases, drugs have been employed to cure them; and as various as were the different opinions of the nature and history of diseases were also the opinions of the knowledge of drugs and drug action. The father of the healing art, Hippocrates, obtained most of his knowledge of drugs from the popular practice; he applied for the cure of the sick only simple, unmixed, and single remedies. Dioscorides in his writings deviated already from the early simplicity, and always compounded several remedies in one prescription; as a consequence, the knowledge of drug action became less and less, and uncertainty increased with the use of a multiplicity of mixed drugs. In the early history of medicine, we find that the similarity of certain plants with certain parts of the human organism was a sufficient reason to ascribe to such plants a specific effect on such similar parts of the human organism. This was one of the sources of the materia [Senate, No. 77.]

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