Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

medicine as potentized development is sufficient for the purpose’ and
‘sufficiently strong dose of the medicine,)...continue use for several
days two adequate doses daily of sufficient size to cause or to
experience an action from it’. ...He goes on to say that if in the space of
some hours there is no action a higher dose must be given, perhaps
doubled. If after several hours it wears off the next day a stronger dose
should be given. The treatment should continue for several days with
progressive doses. The provers were strictly observed for symptoms
and watch kept for anything that might affect the results, e.g. meals,
etc. He pointed out that patients may have idiosyncratic responses. He
used about 50 provers from amongst his family and friends, who must
have accepted his philosophy - ‘Believers’. Despite his efficiency in his
experiments we do not know anything about specific doses causing
specific symptoms nor do we know any incidence figures despite the
fact that he must have known the number of provers that had taken
each drug. As far as I can make out no physical examinations were
made of the provers, so that we cannot link symptoms with definite
physiological changes. Without any control group the symptoms must
be taken as being adverse events rather than adverse reactions.
One cannot accept all the symptoms put forward by Hahnemann
as reliable evidence of the adverse effects of the herbs mentioned.
(http://www.homoeopathieonline.com/materia_medica_homoeopathica/).
‘Observations on the Hydargyria or that vesicular disease arising
from the exhibition of mercury’ by George Alley, second edition, (see
1804). A very detailed description with coloured pictures of the three
stages of the rash: Mitis, Simplex-febrilis and Maligna with
accompanying symptoms.
‘The mercurial disease. An enquiry into the history and nature of the
disease produced in the human constitution by the use of mercury,
with observations on its connection with lues veneria’ by Andrew
Matthias, 1810. This book seems to have difficulty in separating the
adverse events due to mercury from those of the disease, in that in
addition to the usual problems he talks of: mercurial buboes,
mercurial chancre, mercurial ulcerated throat and mercurial disease
of the periosteum, tendons, cartilage, and joints. He wrote ‘I am
convinced that in Europe there is no other remedy which has the
least effect in subduing the venereal irritation... it has the power of
suppressing, but not of curing the venereal action.’ He was the first to
recognise that there was a new discipline, which he called ‘The