Correct methods of proving can only begin with simpler organisms: these will yield simple effects; these will be repeated, but again recognized as we rise higher in the scale of organisms. We should end with experiments on man, instead of beginning with them.

The question of the dose has undergone some changes. We are beginning to look into our ways of the past, and are beginning to improve our errors. As I have had much to say on the subject in the past five years, I will not repeat it here. The change is of a late date. This, like the question of cure, will need much research, — patient, unremitting work of persons who will make it their life-task. The hard-work

ing practitioner asks it: who will furnish it?

Reviewing the field of our inquiry again, I am forced to the conclusion, that, although we are conscious of where improvements in our rule and methods are needed, there is no essential difference between the practice of our school during the forty years after Hahnemann's time and the forty years preceding his death. That what was created has spread widely, and has been accepted by great numbers of physicians, is as true as it is to say that it has not materially changed. The increase by volume of the materia medica is a fact as positive as it is true that it has not essentially improved in intrinsic value.

This is my answer to the title of this paper. Let me ask you not to misconstrue it by thinking me ungrateful, or unmindful of the great advantages of the school whose cause I espouse, whose success I am convinced of, and whose welfare I have at heart. Some may think to promote its cause by proclaiming it perfect, thereby innocently proclaiming their own personal merits as followers of so perfect a system. The truest friends of homoeopathy are those who, while mindful of its great merits, exercise a strict watchfulness over its defects and their own. Those who see it in the light of perfection are in danger of identifying themselves with it. Look to its weak places its strong ones will hold of their own accord.

XVII.

CONTROL-TESTS AND DRUG-PROVINGS.

BY. C. WESSELHOEFT, M.D.

[Read before the Boston Homeopathic Medical Society.]

LET me begin where I left off at the October meeting.' Let us look to the weak places in medicine, for the strong ones will take care of themselves. . . . I yield to none in high estimation of the benefits of our system, and to none among us here in the ability to apply that system. When I say there are imperfections in homoeopathy, I place it on a level with all other human devices. There is nothing so perfect in the world that it might not be improved. To consider homœopathy perfect, would surely mean its decline.

I have maintained,2 that though the formula of similars has been interpreted as being a universal law, and as unfailingly leading to curative results, yet in a real, student-like, and conscientious interpretation, the infallibility of this law must be regarded as entirely conditional. There is more than one condition to be fulfilled:

First, Our provings, that is, symptom-lists, should be absolutely faultless (see Organon, § 120).

Second, Our powers of observation of concrete cases of disease should be so perfect as to apply these symptom-lists with unerring exactitude to similar morbid states.

Third, We should know, or be able to determine beyond doubt or cavil, the exact dose of medicine and its repetition. 1 Vide New-England Medical Gazette for November, 1883, p. 339.

2 Ibid., p. 334.

Only when these conditions are fulfilled, will success be infallible.

In examining our materia medica and our method of its application, the question at once arises as to how nearly these approach the conditions of their perfection. Only one of these conditions will be the subject of consideration to-night; namely, the first, which relates to the methods of proving drugs and some of their results.

Before examining any of our provings as to the manner in which they were obtained, let us endeavor to arrive at some standard by which to examine and judge them. As intimated to you before, methods of experiment, and rules for drawing conclusions, at least in medicine, were very imperfect even a hundred years ago, as compared with those of our own day.

It is to these that I desire to draw your attention by citing some examples, in order that these may be compared with earlier methods and means of experimental test. In doing so, I bear in mind, that, as a general practitioner, I cannot be expected to sum up the value of evidence like one who has devoted a lifetime to the perfection of experimental tests. I draw from such reading as my leisure has permitted me.

When any one attempts an experimental test, he can have no other object than to discover what will be the effect or effects of one or several causes. Such causes may be simple, or they may consist of several forces or agencies, which, whether fully or partially known, may be presumed to have a simple or more or less diversified effect upon the object on which they are brought to bear.

This object itself may be simple; but, in the instances here chiefly considered, it will mostly be of diversified and complicated nature, so that we do not simply witness effects of one cause, but rather a complication of effects, a reciprocal effect resulting from action and counter-action, which renders observation and interpretation extremely difficult.

From this difficulty arises many an uncertainty which greatly embarrasses us in our search for truth. Still this may be reached if we are sufficiently guarded against errors

of judgment. It is to the methods of guarding against errors in experiment, and consequent misinterpretations of results, that I desire to draw your attention.

The precautions and safeguards against errors in experimental tests are generally known by the name of counter-tests, which, like the proving of a sum in arithmetic, will show whether the result is correct or not.

In the following, I shall quote some of the simplest forms of such counter-tests, many of which occur in the investigation of bacteria.

Example 1: Control-Test by Exclusion.

Certain writers' have declared, for example, that the classified forms of so-called bacteria in disease are never any thing else than the three forms of coagulating fibrine, etc. Now let us suppose that the microscope had not easily and definitely refuted this assertion, but that other tests were necessary to disprove it these tests would be done by treating both actual bacteria and actual fibrine with certain chemical re-agents. Thus the fibrine fibrils, treated with acetic acid, will at first swell up, and will then vanish entirely. If the acid is neutralized by strong alkaline solution, these fibrils will re-appear, and again disappear if the fluid is diluted with water. Bacteria, on the other hand, remain entirely unchanged during all of these procedures.

Again: if such fibrine fibrils are stained with methyl-blue, or similar substances, alcohol will remove this color; while bacteria treated in the same manner will retain their color.

Example 2: Control-Test by Reservation.

The following will serve to illustrate the value of safeguards or counter-tests in another respect. In order to demonstrate the presence and pathogenic nature of the anthrax bacillus in blood of diseased animals, and that anthrax is caused by nothing else, the course of the test is as follows: having access

I See forthcoming volume of Transactions of the American Institute of Homœopathy, 1883, on Bacteria, by Dr. W. A. Haupt.

2 Loc. cit.

to an animal about to die from anthrax disease, it is first necessary to sterilize ten test-tubes containing healthy urine. These are closed with cotton, and exposed to heat of 120° C. Four of these are marked 1, 2, 3, and 4; four others, a, b, c, and d; and the last two, o and oo. A space is now shaved upon the animal's belly, disinfected with a solution of corrosive sublimate, an incision made with a disinfected knife, some blood drawn into a disinfected pipette, and a drop of the blood placed in each of the first four test-tubes. Now some blood is obtained in the same way fr m a healthy animal, and introduced into the tubes a, b, c, d, as a control-test. The ten tubes are then left for two days in a temperature of 30° C.; when 1, 2, 3, and 4 will be seen to grow cloudy, while a, b, c, and d, as well as o and oo, undergo no change what

ever.

If, now, certain animals, like mice, guinea-pigs, or rabbits, are inoculated with the turbid fluid of the first four test-tubes, they will invariably perish in a short time with anthrax, of which the bacillus is readily recognized by the microscope in the turbid fluid, while none is found in the other two sets of tubes. Animals, on the other hand, inoculated from the fluid in the second and third sets of tubes, will exhibit no signs of disease whatever.

Example 3: Control-Test by Comparison.

The following example is one of many illustrating the principle of guarding against errors in experimental tests. In order to ascertain what might be the process involved in acute poisoning by phosphorus, certain observers' made a long series of experiments by injecting phosphorated oil into the jugular veins of rabbits and dogs, from which they obtained very uniform results, ending in the death of the animals. There was nothing very remarkable about this, nor about the symptoms observed before death, such as exhalation of phosphoric fumes, vomiting, violent dyspnoea, rattling noises in the chest. The necropsy exhibited great hyper

I Munk and Leyden, Acute Phosphor vergiftung, Berlin, 1865.