How shall we teach Materia Medica and
Therapeutics
By Eugène Beauharnais NASH, M.D.
Presented by Deepak M. R. & Sylvain Cazalet
Dr Eugène Beauharnais NASH
(1838-1917)
In “ye olden
times”, and not so very far back either, the self-styled regular school of medicine
pronounced surgery the “opprobrium of medicine”. In these latter days the order
seems to be reversed, and medicine has become the opprobrium of surgery. In other words it
used to be. If you cannot cure, cut. Now it is if you cannot cut, cure (if you can). What is
the reason of this? I do not believe it to be so much on account of the improved method in
surgery, as in the fact that as compared with ours, they have a very meagre knowledge of the
action of drugs, and no law to guide to the application of them to the healing of the sick.
This is admitted and confessed in their claim to be simply the medical school of experience.
They have rejected the only ‘Nature’s Law of Cure’ ever discovered and given to the world by
Samuel Hahnemann ; a law which could alone lead to an experience, which was reliable and
should endure as long as the truth of Nature’s Law anywhere in science should endure.Under the power of this
Nature’s Law, Aconite Napellus cures the same yesterday, today and forever, all affections
for which it is the true similimum.Guided by this law,
Hahnemann could, by provision, name Camphor, Copper and Hellebore as the leading remedies
for an epidemic of a very fatal disease before he had ever seen a case of it, but simply
from a history or record of the symptoms characterising the genus epidemicus. If such a
system does not deserve the name of a science of medicine, where can we find one in this
valley of the shadow of the death? Having then such a sure foundation, which is the mark of
distinctiveness as a school of medicine, let us not cast away our confidence, but continue
to build upon it so earnestly and so well, that future generations shall bless us for having
profited by the heritage left us in the law of the cure by our glorious master.In our list of remedies
already deserving the name of polychrest, we have an armamentarium for battling with the
ills to which flesh is heir, such as the world never, in its whole history, saw before, and
yet with a generation of years of honest experimentation, I am persuaded that a great ocean
lies yet before us for exploration.Let us for a moment take a
retrospective view. In the up-building of our materia medica comes first : Hahnemann with
his Aconite., Ars., Bell., Bry., Calc., Canth., Caust., Cham.,
Cina., China., Coloc., Ferr., Graph., Hep., Hyos., Ign., Iod., Ipec., Kali-c., Lycop.,
Merc., Nat-mur., Nit-ac., Nux-v., Op., Phos., Phos-ac., Puls., Rhus-t., Sepia., Sil.,
Staph., Stram., Sulph., Thuja and Verat-alb.,
many more not so well-developed might be added.How any man in one lifetime
could give even these thirty-six remedies to the world, so well-developed for practical
application in healing the sick, is beyond my comprehension, and when it comes to doing and
leaving a work that should live to bless humanity for all time to come, I would rather bear
the name of Samuel Hahnemann than that of any king (King David perhaps excepted), that ever
sat upon a throne.Then we have other very
valuable remedies added by Staph, Hering, Franz, Hartiuab, Helbig, Jeanes, Braums Burt,
Rubini, Payne, Kitches, Drysdale, Backman, Schreter, Joslyn and others.Now we are asking ourselves how we shall teach materia medica ?
In order to answer that
question another question should precede it, viz; How shall we know materia medica for there
is no system that can teach well that which we do not know?As we go over the list of
polychrest remedies at hand, who gave us most of them ? and which have stood the test, “ab usu in morbis”, Unquestionable Hahnemann.Has any system for
discovering the pathogenetic and curative powers of drugs, better than his, yet been
discovered? How did he impart the knowledge of his remedies to his followers? He told
his followers both to prove remedies and how to apply them to the sick for their cure in the
incomparable Organon. Everyone that has read the Organon, knows that Hahnemann taught to all the symptoms in the
case and apply the remedy which in its pathogenesis covered most of this case.Or that in any case, the
peculiar symptoms which appeared in a case should be covered by the remedy that had these
symptoms as their strongest characteristics.Here were two methods of
prescribing. The success attending such prescribing was to say the least, very gratifying
and similibus curantur became our formula.Can we better it? I do not
believe we can.Dr.T C Duncan has written a
very interesting article on “How to teach Materia Medica” and in the first part,
he asks the question, “Shall Nash’s Leaders in Homeopathic
Therapeutics be the first book?” If he had put that question to me,
personally even at the risk of being charged with egotism, I would have answered
“Yes” or Allen’ Keynotes or any other man’s books, that would get the student to
“salting down” (for future use) in his memory the peculiar and characteristic
symptoms of every medicine.Dr.Duncan’s curriculum is
summed up in this way :
Materia Medica, therapeutics, etiology, clinical medicine – First
year
Toxic drugs, histological cell changes (first nationals) – Second year
Physiological drugs, antidotal, bacteriology, constitutional diseases – Third year
Drug outlines, keynotes, constitutionals, diagnostics – Fourth year
Drug comparisions, similitudes, exciting causes, Applied medicine.This is the arrangement he
proposes and perhaps it is as good can be, but it seems to me that these characteristic or
keynote symptoms are the backbone for prescribing purposes of our materia medica and that
giving only one place in eight to the branches comprehended under the head of materia medica
and therapeutics is far too little. To be sure, we must teach the toxic, physiological and
outline action of drugs, but when we come to actual prescribing, every true homeopathician
knows that the characteristic and peculiar symptoms, as developed in our Hahnemannian
provings must take the lead.Why then give it so small a
place in our teaching? How would I change it? I would put our key notes, or leading verified
symptoms, just as far as possible, in close connection with every other teaching of materia
medica and therapeutics. For instance when I was teaching of the toxic effects of a drug
like Digitalis, I would teach that the slow pulse was
not only characteristic of the poisonous effect, but was also characteristic for its use in
the treatment of the sick. So also of the soporific effects of Opium,
the violent catharsis of Croton tig, etc. So also of the
physiological action of drugs.I would while teaching under
any of the above-named heads never cease to endeavour to so impress upon the student’s mind
the characteristic, symptomatology of our medicines that he would never forget them.In intimated in the
beginning of that paper that I believed that the reasons for the “craze” in
surgery was forced in that direction because of the inadequacy of their therapeutics.The general toxic and
physiological action of remedies is about all they teach or know, and they placed in classes
such as tonics, anti-phlogistics, sudorifics, diuretics, cathartics, etc, but you ask them
to give the diagnostic shades of difference which enable us to choose between Podophyllum, Aloes, Croton tig and Nat-sulph
for a case of diarrhoea and they know little or nothing about it.Compared with our system,
they have no knowledge that enables them to make the close selection to the one remedy of a
class adapted to a case of disease. Now the difference between them and us is , that while
they have not, we have a materia medica and a scientific “Law” for applying it,
but are not applying ourselves as a school to so thorough an understanding of it as we
should. We are not making ourselves masters of our art, but we are in too many instances
chasing off after other things, specialities in medicine are getting too large a place among
us. Now, do not understand that I ignore specialities. They have their place and we could
not get along with them but I positively know for instance, that much of the local treatment
resorted to in affections having a constitutional origin is entirely unnecessary and very
often positively injurious.The reason of this, I repeat
because we do not sufficiently understand our art as homeopathic physicians. It should be
our pride to boast, that with our superior system of therapeutics we are able to cure
without operation most of the diseases which, under the old school are obliged to come to
the knife.The fact once impressed upon
the people will be of an immense advantage to our school. More cases have died from the
operation for the appendicitis in the last ten years than died in fifty for the need of it.
In thirty-five years of general practice I have had many cases of this disease to treat,
some in which operations was pronounced to be the only hope, and without operations have my
first death to record. What was my remedy ? I only used one remedy in all my cases. The
indicated one, always selected in accordance with the infalliable rule laid down in
paragraph 153 of the Organon. (We all know what that is).
§ 153 Sixth
Edition
In this search for a homoeopathic specific remedy, that is to
say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the natural disease with the list of
symptoms of known medicines, in order to find among these an artificial morbific agent
corresponding by similarity to the disease to be cured, the more striking, singular,
uncommon and peculiar (characteristic) signs and symptoms of the case of disease are
chiefly and most solely to be kept in view; for it is more particularly these that very
similar ones in the list of symptoms of the selected medicine must correspond to, in order
to constitute it the most suitable for effecting the cure. The more general and undefined
symptoms: loss of appetite, headache, debility, restless sleep, discomfort, and so forth,
demand but little attention when of that vague and indefinite character, if they cannot be
more accurately described, as symptoms of such a general nature are observed in almost
every disease and from almost every drug.
Now let me call attention to
the importance of teaching our classes comparative materia medica. More can be sometimes
done by this system to teaching to impress upon the student’s mind the important, leading
symptoms of materia medica and therapeutics than by any other.Let me illustrate. Take the
one very common symptoms so often present in disease – great restlessness. In my “Leaders” I have called Aconite,
Arsenicum and Rhus tox
a trio of restless remedies. Now it would be of no practical use to the prescriber to know
this. Now differentiate between them.Aconite restlessness is
accompanied with fear, synochal fever and pain to which the patient is very sensitive. Fear,
especially fear of death is its leading characteristic, “O, I shall die!” or if he
is ashamed or unable to express it in words, he looks and acts it out. It is the fear as
much as the pain that makes the patient so full of agonised restlessness. Though there may
be no real danger in the case, the patient feels that there is.Now, the Arsenic
restlessness goes with extreme prostration, or reduced vitality, hence is not generally
found indicated in the beginning of acute diseases, while Aconite of Rhus tox’s restlessness
is on account of aching pains which make him toss around or change position for the
temporary relief he gets from the MOVEMENT. Arsenic wants to move from place to place, but
is not relieved. Neither Aconite nor Arsenicum gets such relief from movement, nor does Rhus
tox or Arsenicum fear like Aconite, or atleast to any such degree.Aconite tosses to and fro
in agony and fear, while Arsenicum is too weak to toss as the anguish and restlessness would
incline him to do. And so we can follow up a comparision of these remedies until they shall
so have entered into the mind of the student that he will not easily forget them. Dr.E A
Farrington, gave some of the finest comparative studies in materia medica that ever appeared
in print. But they were not appreciated by the profession and he wrote me in answer to my
inquiry, that they were stopped for that reason.Since the appearance of
“Leaders”, I have been asked to state through journals how I obtained my knowledge
of the materia medica. For the benefit of students, I think I replied in short, through the
“Chironian” that I began by reading Hempel’s “Materia Medica and
Therapeutics, arranged upon a Physiologico-Pathological basis” (The title of his first
edition). It was delightful reading and gave a sort of general knowledge of some of our
remedies, and student as I was, I thought I had it about all, and felt pretty disgusted when
my classmate, Mr.M C Ernsberger told me that I would after all have to refer to good old
Jahr for practical guidance in the selection of my remedy at the bedside. Much to my chagrin
I found it true.When Hering’s characteristic
cards appeared I bought and studies them together with my good wife until I knew each one of
them by heart. Then I followed with Guernsey’s keynotes and Raue’s therapeutic hints, as
they appeared in their works on Obstetrics and Pathology. And I want to say that when these
three works appeared there was a forward movement along the line of succesful homeopathic
prescribing, which, if it had been kept up till now would have put us as a school where no
one would have thought of asking the question, “Is the seperate existence of the
homeopathic school still a necessity ?” Still less bringing it up for discussion in a
State homeopathy society.Now I am aware that I have
not yet answered the question. How shall we teach materia medica
and therapeutics ? for these two subjects should never be separated so long as
the physician’s highest and ONLY calling is to restore health to the sick, which is called
healing (Section 1, Organon) remain true. I will now
state how I will teach.1st
– I would require the student who was a candidate for graduation to pass a ninety
percent examination on the key note or characteristic symptoms. This would be my beginning,
for we must begin somewhere. I would be careful to let him understand that much remained to
be learnt after this, that could not be compassed in his college course, and that he had now
entered into a life study of a subject of the greatest possible importance.2nd
– I would drill the student on comparative materia medica from a symptomatical
standpoint, until be became an adept, if there was such a possibility in his nature.3rd
– I would try to lead him to inquire the why or wherefore the difference between
different remedies having similar symptoms. For instance, why the constipation of Bryonia
and Nux vomica differed in this, that one was attended with frequent, ineffectual desire for
stools, and the other with absence of it, being careful to guard him against hesitating to
use the remedy on the simple indication of its presence whether he could explain it from
physiological standpoint or not.Finally
– I would recommend him to a careful study of the principles touching the subject
as laid down in the “Organon”.I have indicated more at
length in my “Leaders” (pardon the frequent
allusion) at least the way I have learned and would teach the subject and apply it.In conclusion, I want to say
that I hope never to see the time when we, as a school of medicine, will ever depart from
the strict inductive method of Hahnemann.Copyright © Deepak M. R. 2000 http://www.onlinehomeo.com
Copyright © Sylvain Cazalet 2000
