If I have the good fortune to restore him to health, you shall learn my whole mode of procedure. I will reply to Commerzienrath Pietzsch next post. His report is always more favourable. But he is quite a man after my own heart in his obedience to rules. Only imagine, on St. John's day he only drank one glass of wine; that is more than could be expected from a mason. Now he has as his reward the pleasure of getting gradually better. Farewell, and bear in your kind remembrance, your SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. Allopathic Petty Larcenies. In a paper read by Dr. Escallier at the late French Homœopathic congress, the author has collected a number of instances from the allopathic medical press of the employment of homœopathic medicines by the adherents of the old school. We now lay before our readers a brief account of some of the fruits of Dr. Escallier's remarks. In hooping cough the following remedies have been recently recommended and advantageously employed,-belladonna, ammonia, cochineal,* nitric acid. All these are said by our author to have a decided homoeopathic relation to the disease they cured. The following case is given:‡-"A child, two days old, took the breast well until it was seized with bronchitis, when it coughed and threw up the greater portion of the milk it swallowed. Dr. P. Dubois prescribed three grains of powder of Ipecacuanha, in a quarter of a tumbler of cold water, a teaspoonful to be taken occasionally during the day. By the following morning the cough and vomiting were entirely removed. Dr. Christien § remarks the good results obtained in cases of dyspnoea and asthma by the application of liquid ammonia to the back of the throat. Hahnemann's account of the pathogenetic effects of Ammonia show this to be a homœopathic cure. Dr. Espagne gives the details of some cases of hæmoptysis cured by sulphuric acid and millefolium, both of which are known to homœopathists as useful in that disease. * Rev. de Ther. Med.-Chir., 1855, p. 14. Jour de Med. et de Chir. Prat., p. 215. ? Rev. Therap. du Midi., 1855, p. 327. † Ibid., p. 68. || Ibid., p. 45. Dr. Charles Saurel,* after commending the treatment of pneumonia by tartar emetic, says: "I know that in cases of poisoning by tartar emetic, various symptoms of irritation and marked dyspnoea are observed during life, and after death engorgement or hepatisation of the lungs, the principal cause of these symptoms. This may give a kind of pleasure to the partisans of similia similibus." Diseases of the digestive apparatus.-In an article on gastralgia in the Moniteur des Hôpitaux, Dr. Fleury remarks several times that the same agent can sometimes produce gastralgic attacks, sometimes cure them; he has noticed frequently aggravations of these affections by the use of remedies that are employed to cure them, such as subnitrate of bismuth, nux vomica, carbo, iron, &c. A writer in the Rev. du Midi, p. 145, extols the success of purgative treatment in strangulated hernia, but as his purgative mixture consists of castor oil and laudanum, we, as homoeopathists, may be 'supposed inclined to attribute rather to the opium than to the oil the success obtained. Dr. Poitout details the history of two cases of strangulated hernia successfully treated by belladonna, but as he combined opium with the belladonna, the former at least deserved honourable mention as an agent in the cure, to which its homœopathicity would indeed give it a superior claim. Dr. Korroplef, setting out with the idea that dysentery is nothing more than obstinate constipation,(!) naturally conceived that it might be best treated by purgatives; and considering the extreme obstinacy of the constipation-which, by the way, has concealed itself so well hitherto as not to have been visible to any other mortal eye than that of Dr. Korroplef-he selected one of the most powerful purgatives known for its treatment, viz., Croton oil. He was charmed to find his theory verified by the cure of his patients, though he does not inform us if the result of his prescription was a material evidence of the existence of his hypothetical constipation. Dr. Trousseau§ finds the best remedy for very obstinate diarrhoea to be the following prescription:-Arsenite of potass, 1 grain; Distilled water, 6 ounces; a teaspoonful to be taken night and morning. Our Jour. de Med. de Russie. 8 Jour. de Med. et de Chir. Prat., p. 314. readers will recognise this as very like a homœopathic prescription, and as the prescriber acknowledges the existence in medicine of a homœopathic mode of cure, under the title of substitutive medicine, we feel no hesitation in saying that Dr. Trousseau deliberately selected the arsenical preparation for the treatment of these obstinate diarrhoeas on account of its homœopathicity to the disease. We go further, and accuse Dr. Trousseau of having discovered the curative powers of Nux vomica in chorea, of Belladonna in incontinence of urine, and of Arsenic in asthma, in those homœopathic writings he affects to scorn. Dr. Trousseau has the meanness to vilify the system from which he derives those weapons that enable him to treat diseases more successfully than his more consistent allopathic colleagues. That this opinion is not confined to the partisans of the system of medicine he affects to despise while he plunders it, will be seen from the following passage in the Moniteur des Hôpitaux of July 23, 1855. The writer, in allusion to a passage from the report of Dr. Sauvet on Dr. Chargé's work, says : "M. Sauvet reproaches Dr. Chargé with having unjustly classed M. Trousseau among the homeopaths. If we wish to do strictly what is right, we ought to be just even to our enemies. Well then, Dr. Chargé is only half wrong in placing M. Trousseau in the homœopathic gallery. If M. Sauvet will take the trouble to compare what M. Trousseau says of the substitutive method with what the most celebrated homœopaths have said of it, he will have no difficulty in convincing himself that the Parisian professor has borrowed more than once from them. The only merit he possesses above the declared homoeopaths is, that he seems to have had no consciousness of his reminiscences, and that the ideas he expresses relative to the substitutive method seem, when we read them, to be his own." Dr. Valleix was astonished to find that Ipecacuanha, given for the cure of a sore throat to a patient labouring under metrorrhagia, with metritis, completely stopped the metrorrhagia and did much good to the metritis. The Jour. de Med. et de Chir. Pratique, commenting on this case, says that it is not without precedent, for that M. Trousseau has frequently employed Ipecacuanha with the best results in cases of uterine hemorrhage, more especially for cases, like the one in question, where the hemorrhage followed delivery. Homœopathists have long been familiar with the good effects of the same drug in the same disease, but must feel gratified at this notable re-discovery by two such calumniators of their system as Drs. Trousseau and Valleix. (The latter, it will be remembered, took a prominent part in the onslaught on Dr. Tessier.) In his recent work on intermittent fever Dr. Bretonneau proclaims the necessity of exciting the quinine fever in order to obtain a radical cure of the periodic fever; an acknowledgment of the power of quinine to cause a fever, if not a confession of belief in the homœopathic principle. The following case is a marked example of the application of the homœopathic method, unconsciously we may believe, notwithstanding that there are to be found in our homœopathic literature several precisely analogous cases. "A shoemaker was affected by the following complaint:-Every morning when cutting out the work for his workmen, one eye became very much injected, &c. When his work was finished he was obliged to go and lie down in a dark place; whereupon the redness of the eye gradually diminished. The same story was repeated every day. I saw the patient by accident and prescribed arsenious acid. The following day he had a sharp attack of fever, and then no more return of his complaint.” * One of the most remarkable testimonies to the truth of the homœopathic law is to be found in a memoir by Dr. Imbart Gourbeyr on aconite. † In our last vol. we gave an abstract of a paper by this physician on the physiological effects of the essential oil of bitter oranges, and from the unmistakeable homœopathic tendencies of the author, we were led to conclude, in the absence of better information, that he was a candidate for medical honours, believing in homœopathy, but desirous of concealing his heretical creed. We now learn, however, that he is a professor at the school of medicine of Clermont Ferrant. In the essay on aconite to which we allude, after having detailed many instances of its utility in facial neuralgia, he proves, from the works of ancient and modern authors, that it is capable of causing similar symptoms to those it cures, whence he concludes that it demonstrates in the clearest manner the therapeutic law of similia similibus. He adds:" If we will but remain in the domain of facts, if we will live by observation and not by inspiration, we shall not fail to recognize the truth of the law of similitude. Of * Dr. Ch. Saurel, Rev. therap. du Midi, t. viii, p. 358. all the the theories promulgated respecting the mode of action of medicines, it is, in my opinion, the only one which is borne out by facts." A professor in an orthodox school of medicine giving utterance to such heretical opinions is very ominous. Verily old allopathy cherishes snakes in her bosom, which may one day wound her mortally. The following case of rheumatism cured by mercury,* and for that reason only supposed by Dr. Artaud to be of syphilitic origin, is a striking instance of homœopathia involuntaria. "The disease had lasted for three months, all the joints were swollen in the most extraordinary manner; there were very violent pains, especially at night; the appetite was gone, and the debility so great that the patient was in an almost constant perspiration; the skin was flabby and discoloured; it almost looked as if there was a slight oedema of the cellular tissue." The same Dr. Imbart Gourbeyr, cited above, in a recent article on ephidrosis or general chronic sweating, published in the Gazette médicale recommends the use of Aconite for the cure of that affection. After the history of three cases cured by it he says:— "We need not be surprised at this when we study the physiological properties of this medicine. Aconite often manifests an elective action upon the skin, which betrays itself by diaphoresis. Its sudorific action is incontestable; we need only read Störck to be convinced of this." He mentions another case of the same disease cured by sage and by sambucus, which may be explained on the same principle. Dr. Lafargue mentions † having cured in six weeks a hydrocele that had existed for eight months, by means of an ointment composed of 6 parts of digitalis powder to 30 of lard. Dr. Benneci had previously given the history of five cases successfully treated in this way. Digitalis has already been homœopathically used with success in the same disease by Trinks, Altmüller, and Cretin. In the Annales de la France occidentale is an article taken from a Hungarian journal upon the successful treatment of venereal condylomata by means of the external application of tincture of thuja occidentalis, after mercury and even excision had failed. The last instance of homœopathic allopathy quoted by Dr. Escallier is the prophylaxis of yellow fever by means of the inoculation of the *Rev. ther. du Midi. 1855, p. 22. Univer. med., 15 Sept. 1851. |