plant Chenopodium glaucum, which is common in the outskirts of London. Can any of the readers of the British Journal of Homœopathy give the requisite information respecting this "aphis," so as to ensure the correct medicine being obtained?

Rhus venenata-note by DR. THOMAS.

In the last number of the British Journal my meaning respecting the R. venenata was not rendered quite so clear as it might have been. The facts of the case are simply these. The medicament now known as R. vernix is prepared from the plant R. venenata, the provings in our Materia Medica have been obtained from the same The sole error (an important one) is the confounding two very different species of Rhus with each other.

source.

The true R. vernix, a native of Japan and not of N. America, has never been used in homœopathic practice.

OBITUARY.

DR. J. ATTOMYR.

Homœopathy has lost one of its most zealous and talented adherents in the decease of this well-known and deservedly esteemed Hungarian physician. Dr. Attomyr's name has been long very prominently known to the students of homoeopathic literature as well by his numerous contributions to the Archiv of Stapf as by his separate treatises and useful works. The last work on which he was engaged was the Primordien einer Naturgeschichte der Krankheiten, a highly original and ingenious arrangement of our pathogenetic knowledge and clinical experience, but of which only two volumes were completed at the time of his decease. We suspect this work was not encouraged by the profession as much as it merited, probably in consequence of the very novelty of its arrangement and of the views promulgated in it. We have frequently found these two volumes of great service and have more than once referred to them in previous numbers of this Journal. Among his later works we may likewise mention a monograph on the physiological effects of the poison developed in fatty substances, which shews a great amount of research. Dr. Attomyr's was without doubt a most original mind, and some of the works he engaged in have a character of eccentricity and quaintness about them that have excited a good deal of ridicule. Such are his articles on the affections and passions, as morbific and remedial agents. Dr. Attomyr died at Pesth, where he had long practised his profession with success, on the 5th of February last.

DR. ROMAN FERNANDEZ DEL RIO.

Dr. Del Rio was one of the best known and most esteemed homœopathic practitioners of Madrid. He was one of the founders and for long president of the Spanish Academy of Homoeopathy, and editor successively of three Spanish Homœopathic journals. He likewise translated into the Castilian tongue many of the much esteemed German manuals of homœopathy, among others Hartmann's Diseases of Children, and Hering's Domestic Physician. Whilst much occupied with the treatment of cholera cases in Madrid, he caught the infection and died in thirty hours in the 33rd year of his age.

DR. JOHN JOSEPH MACH.

Dr. Mach was born in a small village of Bohemia in 1795. His father being only a poor shoemaker was unable to pay for his education, but this difficulty was got over by the aid of a few friends, who perceived the abilities of the boy, and sent him to the University of Prague, where he diligently pursued the study of medicine, and in due time passed his examinations with great eclat. In the year 1829 he settled down to practice in Karlsbad, and here he became acquainted with the doctrines of Hahnemann, to which he soon became a zealous convert. He married in 1831 and removed to Warnsdorf, a manufacturing town on the borders of Saxony, where he practised with much success. Born and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, his enquiring mind led him to examine the bases of this religion, and thinking they did not agree with the scheme of christianity as he found it laid down in the Bible, he occasionally stated his doubts to his friends. On the 7th of April 1845 he was suddenly seized upon by the police, and without any trial thrown into a damp dungeon, to which no ray of light penetrated, and where he lay for 18 weeks before he was liberated. The consequence of this cruel treatment was that he lost all his teeth by scorbutus, his nails ulcerated, and he shewed all the signs of general decomposition of the blood. His lost health he never entirely recovered. A kind of lupus appeared on his nose, extending to the eyes, one of which it destroyed. Notwithstanding his sufferings he continued to practise almost to the day of his death, which took place on the 12th of November last year.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Medical Reform in the direction of Homœopathy, by a PHYSICIAN. London, Headland, 1856.

Dental Anæsthesia-Painless Tooth Extraction by Congelation, by J. R. QUINTON. London, Theobald, 1856.

Journal de la Société Gallicane.

Canadian Journal of Homœopathy, No. 5.

The Folly and Mischief of Using Purgative Medicines, by W. HEMPSON DENHAM. London, Groombridge, 1856.

Popular Tracts on Homœopathy, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Edinburgh, Allshorn.

W. Davy & Son, Printers, 8 Gilbert Street, Oxford Street..

THE

BRITISH JOURNAL

OP

HOMEOPATHY.

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON DISEASES OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM,

BY DR. RUTHERFURD RUSSELL.

THE object of this paper is the same as that of its forerunner, being an attempt to introduce, if possible, more precision into our use of generic and specific names of the diseases we treat, so that the rich accumulation of experience may become more fruitful by a more careful and methodic arrangement. The two extremes we have to avoid is, a loose way of inscribing under one large heading all the medicines useful in some disease which may have many fundamentally distinct causes; or contenting ourselves with the simple narrative of cases, leaving to the reader the difficult task of forming his own opinion of the exact morbid affection which is described, and of himself, for the assistance of his memory, arranging them in the category for which they seem most appropriate. The loss we sustain by an imperfect registry on the one hand, and no registry at all on the other, must be painfully obvious when we consult any general treatise on the practice of the homeopathic system of medicine: and the justice of these remarks will be readily acknowledged in reference to the first disease of VOL. XIV, NO. LVIII.-OCTOBER, 1856.

2 M

the centre of the nervous system, on which I propose to comment-Epilepsy.

.*

There are few diseases, if any, more interesting to the practitioner, and especially to the homoeopathist, than epilepsy. It is one of very frequent occurrence: out of 3636 patients treated at the London Homœopathic Hospital 191 were epileptic. It is one not less mysterious in its nature than uncertain, both in its natural course and in the results of our treatment. For example, we find that out of the 191 cases which were treated at the London Homœopathic Hospital 38 were reported as cured; out of 16 cases treated at the Leipzig Dispensary in 1854, 6 were cured; while at the same institution during the following year, out of 10 cases there was only one cure.* Out of 51 cases treated at the Hahnemann Hospital there are no cures recorded, nor of the 3 cases reported as having occurred in the Manchester Hospital. This enormous diversity of result suggests a corresponding difference in the character of the cases, for the treatment was doubtless much the same in all, and indeed the results of two years in the same institution present almost as great a contrast as we meet with in the series. On what then does this difference depend? This question implies a previous one. What is epilepsy? It is briefly described by Dr. Watson as "a temporary suspension of consciousness with clonic spasm, recurring at intervals." If we accept this definition, we exclude from the title of epilepsy all cases of convulsions which consist of one single attack, and this is by no means an inconsiderable class. For example, many children have what is called a teething-fit, and in most treatises on the subject such fits are represented as being of a true epileptic character. The same may be said of the fits which not unusually attend intestinal irritation and child-bearing. In short, this definition limits the use of the term to cases where the disease presents itself as one of a periodic kind, and suggests the suspicion of its origin being in the centre of the nervous system, the brain or spinal cord, and not in any irrita

* Hom. Vierteljahrschrift, 1854-1855.

Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic, by Thomas Watson, M.D., third edition, vol i, p. 624.

tion of the peripheral nerves. Perhaps this is the juster view to take, but it is opposed to the uniform practice of all writers from Hippocrates downwards, not excluding Dr. Watson himself, who in this matter falls into a self-contradiction. That epileptic attacks begin, in some cases, by an irritation at the circumference, is an indisputable fact. Romberg * relates the following case, which came under his own observation, in proof of this.

"A labouring man of robust constitution, who applied for relief in the Policlinique, had fallen, three years previously, upon his right knee, in consequence of which the joint had become disorganized. The patient had from this period suffered from epileptic attacks. The aura epileptica commenced as a creeping sensation in the large toe of the right foot; from here it mounted upwards along the inner surface of the leg and thigh, and ended in the epileptic seizure. In this case the aura did not proceed from the seat of the injury, the knee joint; but when we consider the sensibility of the integuments at the inner side of the knee-joint, as well as those of the large toe, is derived from the same nerve, the saphenus major, the connection between the aura and the cause of disease seems undeniable." This is a very instructive case, for it seems to prove two things: first, that epileptic convulsions may really be caused by some injury to the peripheral nerves, and this is confirmed by many similar cases on record; and secondly, that the aura which is referred by patients to the extremity of the nerves, may be caused by some morbid action at some point nearer the centre. In Romberg's patient the knee was the "fons mali," but when there is no obvious injury, it is impossible to tell whether this curious sensation be really of a central or peripheral origin. The whole subject of this aura epileptica seems to require further observation. It has been probably too hastily adopted as a pretty constant feature in epilepsy upon conjectural grounds. That an impression made at the surface should be conducted like an electric current up the nerves till it reached the brain, where it exploded the accumulated nervous irritability, and produced a convulsion, seems a sort of notion tacitly conveyed,

* Diseases of the Nervous System, vol. ii, p. 210.