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PREFACE. - THE GUIDING SYMPTOMS OF OUR MATERIA MEDICA By CONSTANTINE HERING, M.D.
This work will especially commend itself to the busy practitioner, because it is an attempt to give our Materia Medica in such a form as will make the selection of a curative medicine in any given case as easy as possible. It is a complement to all other works on our Materia Medica, being principally a collection of CURED SYMPTOMS. We could fill pages with quotations from our best practitioners in favour of their use in the selection of remedies. A cured symptom only, has never such an intrinsic value as one produced and cured, and yet, such a one should not be ignored ; in course of time it may be added to the characteristics. Of course all characteristics will be found here, and many other symptoms produced and cured, which further experience may warrant us in marking up in degree until they attain the grade we denominate characteristics.
As so many peculiar views have been expressed in regard to what is meant by a characteristic, a few words on the subject may not be out of place. Some of our best observers have been sneered at by would-be critics, as if they had been guilty of manufacturing characteristics. This, of course, proves them to be sadly deficient in a knowledge of the Organon. Let us see what Hahnemann says there, in his masterly advice how to examine the sick.
§ 95. In chronic diseases the investigation of all symptoms should be conducted as carefully and circumstantially as possible, and made to penetrate the minutest details, because they are most peculiar and most unlike those of acute affections, and also because they never can be too accurately considered for the purpose of successful treatment. Again, chronic patients are so injured to suffering, that circumstances, however characteristic and decisive in the selection of the remedy, are rarely, if at all, mentioned by them, but rather considered as a part of their unavoidable condition. It rarely occurs to them that other small or great deviations from the healthy condition might be connected with the main disease.
§ 101. A physician accustomed to exact observation may approach the true condition of an epidemic so closely that he is enabled to construe a characteristic image of the same, and even to discover the appropriate homœopathic remedy.
§ 102. By writing down the symptoms of several cases of this kind, the sketch of the disease will gradually become more complete ; without being enlarged by additional phrases, it will be more closely defined (more characteristic) and made to embrace more of the peculiarity of such collective diseases. General signs such as want of appetite, sleeplessness, etc., are specified and defined. More prominent and special symptoms will be made conspicuous by proper notation, and constitute the characteristics of the epidemic.
§ 104. When all the prominent and characteristic symptoms, collectively forming an image of a disease, have been carefully committed to writing, the most difficult part of the work will have been done.
§ 153. The search for a remedy consists in the comparison of the totality of the symptoms (of the sick) with the symptoms of our proved drugs. In making this comparison, the more prominent, uncommon and peculiar (characteristic) features of the case are especially and almost exclusively considered and noted ; for these in particular should bear the closest similitude to the symptoms of the desired medicine, if that is to accomplish the cure. More general and indefinite symptoms, such as want of appetite, headache, weakness, restless sleep, distress, etc., unless more clearly defined, deserve but little notice on account of their vagueness.
In paragraphs 164, 165 and 178 nearly the same is repeated.
For the benefit of all who may have an opportunity of comparing the master's first edition of 1810, we quote the paragraphs and pages where he used the word "characteristic." § 74, p. 73, more fully explained ; § 129. P. 108 ; § 135, p. 114 ; § 152, p. 122 ; § 169, p. 132 ; § 183, p. 151.
Every word contained in his masterly advice how to examine the sick was new and unheard of in the history of medical science.
According to this practical advice of Hahnemann, we have endeavoured to find out the characteristics of our drugs.
What are the ways our School has followed? The first is, we allow the possibility that symptoms may follow when a drug is taken in health, and that these symptoms are produced conjointly by the drug and the prover.
"Could Cinchona bark produce altered sensations on myself, if I took it now in health?" This was the question which induced Hahnemann to make his first proving, in 1790. The answer was, he felt a group of symptoms exactly such as he had when he suffered from intermittent fever, twenty years before, in Siebenbürgen. Was he satisfied with this observation? Certainly not. He repeated his experiment, and he repeated it several times with exactly the same result. "I stopped taking it, and got well," he says.
Throughout all, we see the fine result of the thinking lessons given to Hahnemann by his father when a boy.
His very first step already refuted the slander which was subsequently flung at our school, that it was based on the conclusion, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. If the same or similar symptoms appeared in the proving of a drug on the healthy, they were considered as having been probably caused by it, and the oftener the symptoms appeared in the provings, the greater became the probability. How anxiously the first builders of our Materia Medica looked for the printing of the provings, in order to compare their own with the symptoms of others, deriving enjoyment from each confirmation! The next step was to look for physiological and pathological corroborations. But all this was only considered as magnifying the probability.
The next step was to give a drug to the sick, according to the symptoms it had produced on the healthy and the cures made were the verifications.
Finally we obtained the CHARACTERISTIC, the ripe fruit hanging upon the tree.
We never selected the remedy according to the loose generalizations in fashion with many, and considered more scientific. We never walked on pathological stilts, but always took the symptom as a reality, on the one side observed by the prover, and on the other side observed on the sick.
Phrases of "grand starting-points" and "centres of action in the ganglionic nerve-centres" are vagaries of a scientific appearance which every tyro can manufacture anew according to the latest fashion.
The definition of a characteristic being "a symptom not found under more than one remedy" is quite erroneous. Such a unicum occurring among a large collection of symptoms should be looked upon with suspicion. On the contrary, all our most approved characteristics, as they have been corroborated time and time again, are never such as are found in one medicine alone.
Tissues. /\ or better, modalities.
The characteristic may be found in one or more of these. Three points of rest, according to mathematics, being enough to support any object, we may assume that three characteristics should be sufficient to make a cure very probable.
All the so-called dynamics have been omitted. Thus the various applications of heat and cold, the water treatment, the two electricites, light and the use of colors, especially the indispensable blue light, magnetism (the work of many years of our master), the contact of metals (lately taken up again by the Old School), the highly valuable mesmerism, and the movement cure ; not as if one could be a physician without them, but because they ought to be treated of in a separate work. So also all medicinal springs have been left out for the same reason. Some of the drugs have not found a place in this work for want of trustworthy cures.
Very little notice has been taken of the so-called "critics," remembering the "razzia" of Roth in Paris, who had no other intention but to destroy our Materia Medica, and that by striking out, for the most trivial reasons, symptoms by the thousand. Like a don Quixote, he was fighting with windmills, and was not without a Sancho Panza, who wrote a treatise to show that Hahnemann's quotations of Dulcamara were erroneous, and that we had no right to give it for symptoms following exposure to cold. The poor critic did not know that there was scarcely a practitioner of homœopathy who had not made such cures by the score.
WE herewith present to the medical profession Vol. III of The Guiding Symptoms, the completion of which we have found a labor of love.
Actuated, as we have been, by the spirit of the departed author, it has been our aim to complete the volume just as it would have been had Hering lived. At the time of his death, the first forms, containing Bryonia, had left the press ; Bufones, Cactus, etc., had been prepared by him for the printer, and a day before his sudden death he was collating the materials of Calcarea ostrearum. Here his work of over fifty years was turned into hands he had trained and trusted, for the purpose of completing what he felt he would never see finished in this life, and yet hoped to in the next ; for in his homely and quaint way he said, a few weeks before his departure, "Perhaps, from my place in Heaven, I may peep through a little hole and see that my work is well done !"
As soon as preliminaries were arranged, and his MSS. placed in our hands, we worked assiduously until the completion of the present volume, which is the fruition of our labors. Its earlier appearance was prevented by other exacting literary work and professional duties that demanded close application.
one of his oldest and dearest friends.
but he had been called away, and his place remained empty.
Why was the second volume not dedicated ? At that time, after the unexpected demand for a second edition of the Condensed Materia Medica, it seemed very uncertain whether an exhaustive work would ever be wanted by the profession ; but the demand for our third volume, makes it no longer doubtful.
As this country never forgets pioneers, let our names go together in history, until the time comes when Hahnemann's will be the predominating medical school."
"Individualize ! and study our most valuable medicines in their monographies, picking them out here and there for comparison, but not in alphabetical order. Go on in that way, not omitting a day, until Zinc. will roof the building."
To the marks used in the present volume, we have nothing to add to the explanation given in Volume 1, except that the character "(In sick :)" has been used to denote symptoms produced while the sick were under medicinal action.
For many words of encouragement from numerous friends we have felt grateful, and among others we desire to thank Dr E. A. Farrington for useful suggestions, and Drs C. B. Gilbert, A. C. Rembaugh, Levi J. Knerr and Edward M. Gramm for clerical assistance.
WE take pleasure in presenting to the medical profession Volume IV of THE GUIDING SYMPTOMS, which, like the preceding volumes, contains a complete collection of the prominent cured symptoms, as well as the characteristic pathogenetic ones, of each remedy, according to the original plan projected by Dr Hering.
We have added one new feature, however, which will doubtless prove useful to the busy practitioner. At the head of each drug will be found a clinical index, giving a list of authorities, and designating the publication in which the full report of each case with its cured symptoms may be found.
To many physicians acquainted with the former volumes issued we are indebted for encouraging words of approval of our task, and we send forth this volume on its divine mission, feeling assured that it will prove as useful an aid in healing the sick as have its predecessors.
AFTER unavoidable delays, Volume V of THE GUIDING SYMPTOMS is presented to the medical profession, published by the heirs of Constantine Hering. The American Homœopathic Publishing Society, which had contracted to publish the complete work, through lack of business facilities, was compelled to relinquish the pleasant task after the publication of the fourth volume, but has made provision for the completion of the work by the Hering heirs, the editorship remaining the same.
The editors take pleasure in acknowledging the clerical labors of Drs Rudolph Bauer and Edwin H. Kistler, who have worked assiduously on the present volume, and who have been induced to continue their aid so as to insure the rapid completion of the remaining volumes.
IN giving Volume VI to the profession, we recognize that our labor has been one of unusual pleasure and satisfaction, for it contains, besides a large number of valuable medicines, LACHESIS TRIGONOCEPHALUS, the pet child of Dr Hering.
We quote a circular he issued in 1878, addressed "To All Friends of Lachesis."
"Be it known that neat 28th of July it will be fifty years since the first trituration and first dilution in alcohol of the snake poison Trigonocephalus Lachesis was made.
"We intend to celebrate that day by closing a collection of reports, consisting of provings, toxicological effects, cures, characteristics, corroborations, etc., etc. Quotations from books or journals where Lachesis has been mentioned are solicited, since it is possible that some may have escaped the author's notice.
"In the life of the author the order of the Parcæ or Fates has been reversed. Atropos, the inevitable, who cuts the thread, came to him first when a little boy in the form of a caterpillar on his father's grapevine and gave the incentive to the study of natural history.
"Then came Lachesis, the disposer of destinies ; and Clotho comes last and holds the distaff while the author spins the fabric of symptoms.
"The son and daughter of Lachesis, by name Psorinum and Lyssinum, heretofore called Hydrophobinum, are receiving a careful revision and will be printed before long. The several brothers and sisters of Lachesis are waiting to be acknowledged and proved, particularly the Naja of East India, and the Lance viper of Martinique. We do not even have a complete collection of the effects of the bite of any of these snakes.
"The Lachesis Jubilee could not be better celebrated than by sending contributions to such a collection ; also cured cases, provings, etc., etc., all of which will be gratefully acknowledged by the author and embodied in the monograph.
To all who responded to the invitation (their names are printed in the list of Clinical Authorities heading Lachesis) the editors return thanks in the name of the author, who did not live to publish his monograph.
In collecting the clinically verified symptoms of Lac Caninum and Lac Defloratum, remedies that are fast growing in usefulness and popularity, we are indebted for valuable assistance to Drs : S. Swan, of New York, and E. W. Berridge, of London, besides others in the profession.
AT last the TENTH and final volume of The Guiding Symptoms is completed, and the promise made to Dr Hering, shortly before his death, and subsequently to the homœopathic profession, that the literary executors would finish the colossal work, is fulfilled. Too much cannot be said in praise of the assiduity and faithfulness of Drs Raue, Knerr and Mohr in the execution of their editorial labors, covering a period of nearly a dozen years. And to Walter E. Hering belongs the credit of furnishing the means for the mechanical execution of his father's chef-d'œuvre.
It now remains for the homœopathic profession, for whose weal the genius and fifty years' labor of Dr Constantine Hering were ungrudgingly given, to receive the completed work, and use it, as intended by its projector, for the healing of the nations.

References: § 95

§ 101

§ 102

§ 104

§ 153
 § 74
 § 129
 § 135
 § 152
 § 169
 § 183