person; and he owed it to them, and to those who shared with him in them, not to condone the offence. We too, for like reasons, having expressed our readiness to receive overtures of peace, and laid down the grounds on which alone we can make it, must wait the action of the other side. I can hardly now say, as I did twenty years ago, that I hope my generation will see it. The next, however, it will assuredly visit. For our children we may safely anticipate the time when the name of homœopathy shall no longer denote a persecuted sect, but a faith and practice recognised universally as legitimate and largely as true; when the antagonisms of to-day shall have ceased to separate between brethren, and all shall be united in generous emulation as to who shall do most good to the objects of their

care.

LECTURE XV.

GENERAL DISEASES.

The Acute Infectious Disorders.

We have now spent some time together in considering the principles of homoeopathy, including its history and the position and claims of the body of practitioners designated by its name. I will ask you to carry in your mind what we have thus ascertained while I proceed to apply to special therapeutics the method I have been describing. I will ask you also to possess yourselves of, or secure ready access to, my "Manual of Pharmacodynamics" in one of its later editions. I have there gone fully into the actions of drugs, both pathogenetic and curative, and do not want to spend time in traversing the ground anew on our present journey. I wish to take up the subject from the side of disease to tell you, as I have said, what homoeopathy can do for its various forms, and how it does it.

You may ask why I do not refer you for this purpose to the treatises on the Practice of Medicine which already exist in the school of Hahnemann (I have mentioned some of them in my Lecture XI.), and which aim at superseding, for homoeopathic students and practitioners, the ordinary text-books. I do not mean indeed those of the last generation, as Hartmann's,* Laurie's,† or Marcy and Hunt's. Whatever their measure of usefulness in their time, they are to us alike imperfect and obsolete. But in the works of Bähr§ and of Jousset || (and, if you read German, I would add that of Kafka¶) you will find nothing to repel you and much, very much, that will interest and instruct. I should content myself with referring you to these excellent treatises, but for one defect they all possess. Each author is limited in his therapeutics by the experience of himself * "Acute and Chronic Diseases and their Homoeopathic Treatment," by F. Hartmann. Tr. by Hempel.

† "Elements of the Homoeopathic Practice of Physic." 1850. (See B.J.H., vi., 227.

"Homœopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine." 1865. (See ibid., xxiii., 475.)

64

Science of Therapeutics according to the Principles of Homoeopathy." Tr. by Hempel. 1869. (See ibid.. xxviii., 607.)

|| Eléments de Médecine pratique. 1868. (See ibid., xxvii., 123.) Die Homöopathische Therapie auf Grundlage der Physiologischen Schule. 1865-9. (See ibid., xxvii., 333.)

and his compatriots. Bähr and Kafka know nothing of French homœopathic literature, and Jousset as little of German; while (with rare exceptions) both display entire unacquaintance with the writings in the English tongue which have come from this country and from America. The same may be said of the otherwise excellent treatise which I have commended to you from the pen of Dr. Goodno of Philadelphia; * and still more of a volume I shall often quote-the "Forty Years' Practice" of the well-known Jahr, which is, as its title implies a purely personal record. The result is that in none are the means and the possibilities of homoeopathy in the treatment of disease fully set forth. I strongly recommend you to procure and study as many of these books as you can; but I cannot feel that by such advice I am meeting your whole need.

In the lack, accordingly, of other work fitted for the object, I proceed myself to discourse to you on special as I have done on general homoeopathic therapeutics. In so doing, I shall make no attempt to follow most of the authors I have mentioned in constructing a complete Practice of Physic. It is quite unnecessary for your purpose. You know disease as well as I do. I can tell you nothing about the history, the diagnosis, or the pathology of its various forms but what you know already, or at any rate may acquaint yourselves with by consulting the authorities on your bookshelves. You will meet me halfway here; and I may spare myself the travel over the familiar road. What you want to know is this. Here is a recognised malady. You have learned or have been accustomed to treat it in such and such a way, and with such and such success. Has homœopathy discovered how to treat it as well, or better? How far shall you be justified in any given case in dispensing with measures which, however rude, are tried, and trusting unreservedly to the action of specific medicines? The question is a fair, and indeed an imperative one for you to put. The law of similars, relating as it does solely to the dynamic action of medicines, has obviously limitations inherent in its own nature. It is further only capable of application to practice when similarly acting medicines have been discovered. There may

be diseases therefore which lie beyond its possible range; and still more likely is it that there are diseases which have not yet come within its practical range. Accordingly, our first step must be to inquire what homoeopathy can do-as compared with the capabilities of Old Physic-in each malady that comes before us. And next you will require to know what are the specific remedies with which success has hitherto been obtained, and how far they need supplementing by auxiliary means.

To answer these questions, from a survey of homoeopathic literature, and from my own experience, will be my only and sufficient task. I shall say no more upon the nature of the various diseases than is necessary for their identification, that we may know we are thinking of the same thing. Confining ourselves thus to their prognosis and treatment, we shall save an infinity of time and space, and shall be devoting our energies to what are really the only points on which your adoption of homœopathy will require you to have fresh knowledge and

modified views.

The literature on which I shall draw consists of the clinical records scattered throughout homoeopathic periodicals, or brought together in the collections of Rückert * and Beauvais ;† and of the monographs we have on special forms of disease. To these I shall make copious reference as I go on. I shall also glean all I can from the text-books, and refer you to them when their treatment of any subject is especially instructive. My lectures will thus serve as an index to our therapeutic literature at large; so that under their guidance you will be able to read up most of what has been written on any malady which is demanding your special attention.

In choosing a classification of diseases for my purpose, I shall adopt, as in duty bound, the Nomenclature drawn up by the Royal College of Physicians, and furnished to us officially by our government (3rd ed., 1896). I shall not, however, deny myself the liberty of making occasional transferences of order and shiftings of place-still less of supplying omissions-when such alterations seem to subserve the practical ends I have in view.

Concerning all these forms of disease I shall have to tell you, as I have said, the actual results homoeopathy has obtained in their treatment, and the means it has employed. But ever and anon I shall come upon a malady which has never fallen under my own notice, and regarding whose specific therapeutics we have no recorded experience. What am I to do then? Well, I shall consider the features of the disorder as described by those who have seen it; and shall specify what medicines seem to be homœopathically indicated for it in its several varieties and stages. But, besides this, you yourselves will continually be meeting in practice with cases which do not readily fall into the categories of the best classification, to which indeed you can hardly give a name, but which are not less true cases of disease. What are you to do? for my lectures will hardly help * Klinische Erfahrungen in der Homöopathie. 1852, &c. (See also British Journ. of Hom., xx., 491.)

+ Clinique homœopathique. 1850.

you here. The answer is obvious: you in your turn must draw upon your knowledge of pharmacodynamics, and select the medicine most appropriate to the phenomena before you.

But here another consideration comes in. The appropriateness of a remedy in homœopathic practice depends upon the similarity of its pathogenetic effects to the symptoms of the disease; and the closer the similarity the more perfect the appropriateness. Now these cases of which I speak consist ordinarily of a good many symptoms. Your aim must be to "cover" all or as many as possible of these with the corresponding medicine, that so you may get no rough simile merely, but a simillimum, to the morbid state before you. Can any manual of pharmacodynamics picture all the pathogenetic effects of all drugs, or can any study of the Materia Medica itself enable you to retain them all in your mind? It is evidently impossible. You must, under these circumstances, adopt unreservedly Hahnemann's original mode of homoeopathizing, as he has described and illustrated it in the preface to the second volume of the later editions of his Reine Arzneimittellehre.* You must note the symptoms of the case before you; and then turn to the Materia Medica itself, and not your mere recollection of it, to find the medicine which most closely corresponds.

But the Materia Medica of Homoeopathy is at the present day a most voluminous collection. Are you to wade through it every time you prescribe for such cases in search of your simillimum? Nay, you must have an index; and such indices exist (as I have told you) in no small number in homœopathic literature, under the title of Repertories. A repertory, as its name implies, is a means of finding that to which it belongs. The subject-matter of a homoeopathic repertory is the Symptomen-Codex, and its object is to save us the turning over every page of that collection in search of what we want. But an index may be a good or a bad one. It is good in proportion as it is copious-as by repeating each topic in every element of which it consists it ensures immediate success in consulting it. I have told you where you may best find such guides, and can only urge that you possess yourselves of one or other of them, as indispensable to the practice you have in view.

Nor is it in these anomalous cases only that you should, with the aid of your repertory, consult the Materia Medica. You will ever and anon have to do so in the treatment even of the ordinary forms of disease. Lectures on Therapeutics can only deal with species and their recognised varieties; but the practitioner has to care for individuals. Such individuals may be undistinguished members of the species, or variety of the * Vol. I., p. 20, of Dudgeon's translation.