confidence in the love of justice of our colleagues to believe that they will give to homœopathists the credit they deserve, and where they have been so long endeavouring to rear a Tyburn gallows for our punishment, they I will wish to erect a Marble Arch to our honour.

Though the flow of avowed medical converts to homœopathy seems to be diminished or almost arrested, the conversions are not less numerous than in past years, only they are not avowed, and the universal prevalence of the system is assured. The old school still reviles us, while adopting our methods and remedies; she still asserts her exclusive possession of the truth in medicine, while abandoning one by one all her traditional beliefs and practices.

As Cambronne at Waterloo exclaimed, "la Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!" (or something equivalent), but thought better of it and surrendered, so allopathy, on the eve of her surrender, sings, "Britons never, never, never will be homeopaths," threatens to nail her colours to the mast and rather go to the bottom shouting "Vive l'allopathie!" than yield an inch of her territory or a stone of her fortresses to the advancing conqueror, who has already beaten her out of all her strong places, stormed her Strasburg of bleeding, overwhelmed her with confusion at her Sedan of salivation, battered down her Metz-or as the French pronounce it her Mess-of blisters, cauteries and emetics, and now closely invests her in her last fastness, which is already distracted by intestine dissensions, and whose much vaunted citadel the Mont Valérien of rationality, last hope of orthodoxy, has just been basely given up by the traitor Moxon.

Until the leaders of medical opinion in the dominant school shall have ceased their illogical and insincere opposition to us, and shall have admitted our claim to have the homœopathic method recognized as a legitimate mode of ascertaining the remedial virtues of drugs, of value at least equal to their own empirical no-method, our duty clearly is to cultivate our own field of therapeutics diligently, to increase and perfect our provings, and to render them more available in practice. When opportunity and leisure offer we should not neglect the other branches of medical science, and the singularly valuable and profound essays of Henderson, Drysdale, Madden, and my immediate predecessor in this chair, Sharp, on physiology and pathology, the important discoveries of Drysdale in the

life history of the minute organisms revealed by the microscope, and the masterly work of Blackley on the origin of hay-fever, a work which has obtained the well-merited applause of all the organs of medical and scientific opinion, prove that a profound acquaintance with homœopathic therapeutics and skill in their application, by no means disqualify their possessor for attaining the very highest eminence in physiological and pathological science.

ON THE ACTION OF NITRIC ACID IN CERTAIN FORMS OF COUGH.

By D. DYCE BROWN, M.A., M.D.

If there is a great charm in opening a new mine of wealth in medicine, by discovering a new drug, and pointing out its indications for treatment, there is an almost equal charm in bringing into prominent notice a medicine, which, though long known, is little used, and especially in developing its value in certain particular forms of disease, in which, to judge by the rarity of its prescription and notice in our journals, it is almost unknown.

One is very apt in the everyday round of practice to prescribe our well known and well tried medicines, and to allow the virtues of other drugs, equally valuable in their own spheres, to be forgotten. In this present paper, then, I please myself by the thought that I shall perhaps render a small service to my homeopathic confrères, by endeavouring to develope the value of nitric acid in certain forms of cough. Of course there are other uses of nitric acid, but it would make much too lengthy a paper to take up more than the one point I have named. I shall break this resolution in only one particular, by noticing its great value in constipation. This is a point of which I was not previously aware, but which forced itself upon my observation in the treatment of the cough

cases.

The only full account of the pathogenesis of nitric acid is in Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases, vol. iv., where it is classed among the anti-psoric remedies. Dr. Hughes, in his Pharmaco-Dynamics, says of this pathogenesis, "I must confess myself at a loss what to make of the provings in that remarkable work. Until the day books of the provers are published, and the quantity and frequency of the doses taken are ascertained, I feel the utmost un

certainty as to the reality of the numerous and multifarious symptoms ascribed to the antipsoric' medicines. With nitric as with muriatic acid, I must direct you for the present to clinical experience as the only available means of ascertaining its sphere and mode of action."

With all due deference to Dr. Hughes, I think this is rather a severe criticism on Hahnemann's pathogenesis. Of course the meaning and value of all the recorded symptoms would be much more apparent, had the particulars of the doses been given, but still I think we can see running all through the proving a state of body, which in my experience is the one where nitric acid is chiefly indicated. It is, to state it shortly, a state of general physical depression, which shows itself in various ways. In a paper like the present it would be impossible to analyse and comment upon all the morbid conditions described as present by Hahnemann, but in the majority of cases where I have found nitric acid indicated for cough, and of service in its removal, there is this general state of physical depression more or less marked. Perhaps the most interesting method to pursue, instead of giving a list of pathogenetic symptoms, will be to draw a picture of what in my view is a typical nitric acid case.

The complaint is, to begin with, an essentially chronic one. All the symptoms point to this; and I do not think that it is at all a medicine suited to acute cases. The patient has from the continuance of the disease got into a general state of bad health. There is general lassitude and weakness, with loss of energy, feeling of unfitness for exertion and work of any kind, and after any work or exertion, a state of unusual and abnormal tiredness. With this there is more or less mental depression, which is simply the result of the physical weakness. There are occasional headaches, which seem to me the result of a part of the disordered state of the digestive organs. The digestive organs show also this condition of depression. There is generally no gastric irritation, in the proper sense of the word, but a want of appetite, associated with a tongue which may be quite clean, or slightly coated towards the back; a bad taste in the mouth in the morning; and after food a feeling of fulness or distension, often actual pain, and a tendency to be squeamish. Hahnemann mentions both a state of constipation and of diarrhœa as present. My experience is that con

stipation is the prevailing state, often to such a degree as to induce the patient to take purgative medicine for its relief. There is generally considerable loss of flesh, unrefreshing sleep at night, feeling of feverishness at night, with hot skin and thirst, and often night-sweats. In women leucorrhoea may be present. Then there is generally cough in several different forms. These I would divide into two principal kinds, the non-phthisical cough, and the phthisical. In the former class of cases, on examination of the chest, we find little abnormal. No dulness on percussion, no tubular breathing, nor increased vocal resonance, nor even bronchitic sounds; perhaps feebleness of breathing, and sometimes not even that. The form of the cough in these cases is one coming on chiefly during the day, though it also may cause some trouble on first lying down in bed. The cough is sometimes nearly dry, what expectoration there is being mucous and rather difficult to bring up; at other times there may be a considerable amount of sputum; the cough may be a short cough, or may take the form of "fits" of coughing, in which case it may sometimes cause retching, as in hooping cough. There is frequently, but not always in such cases, more or less uneasiness in the chest, soreness at the bottom of the sternum, or localised pains in either side of a sharp or dull character. Another very common variety of cough is that where it occurs almost entirely in the morning, on first waking, or on getting up out of bed. There is then a good deal of coughing, with a considerable quantity of mucous expectoration, after which during the day there is nothing more than an occasional cough till the time of going to bed, when for a time an increase of the coughing occurs. In these cases there is little or no chest pain, and less disturbance of the general health than in the former cases. A variety of the latter class of cases is, when along with the morning cough, there is a considerable amount of shortness of breath, which also passes off after the morning expectoration is brought up, or after a nervine stimulant, such as a cup of tea. Another class of cases in which nitric acid is frequently of service is in cases of emphysema. In such cases, with the usual physical signs of emphysema, we have shortness of breathing on any exertion, and especially on going up a stair, considerable paroxysms of coughing, with dyspnoea early in the morning, and also